Benefits for Grandparents Raising Grandchildren in Arkansas

Taking in a grandchild is an act of love, but it also comes with real costs — food, clothing, school supplies, doctor visits — often on a fixed income. Arkansas has several benefit programs available to grandparents and relatives raising children, and most of them don't require a court custody order.

ARKids First (Children's Medicaid)

The biggest immediate need is usually health insurance. ARKids First covers doctor visits, prescriptions, dental, vision, and mental health services for children through age 18.

As a caretaker relative, you can apply for the child's coverage through DHS at access.arkansas.gov or your county DHS office. ARKids eligibility uses family-income limits tied to family size, and DHS says parents and caregivers count toward family size. A custody order is not required to apply. See How to Get ARKids First as a Grandparent for the process.

Child-Only TANF (TEA)

The Transitional Employment Assistance (TEA) program — Arkansas's version of TANF — can provide a small monthly cash payment for a child living with a non-parent relative. Like ARKids First, the "child-only" version evaluates the child's resources, not yours.

The monthly amount is modest (based on the child's needs standard), but it helps with basic expenses. Apply through the same DHS portal at access.arkansas.gov.

SNAP (Food Assistance)

If the child's household income qualifies, SNAP benefits help cover food costs. You can include the child in your SNAP household or apply for a separate child-only case. Children receiving TANF or Medicaid may be directly certified for free school meals through the National School Lunch Program without a separate application.

Child Care Subsidies

Arkansas's Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) plan for 2025-2027 explicitly prioritizes families experiencing homelessness and informal kinship placements. If you're working or in training and need child care, subsidies may be available through your county DHS office or a local child care resource and referral agency.

The DCFS Path: Subsidized Guardianship

The programs above are available to private kinship caregivers — relatives raising a child outside the foster care system. A separate, more substantial support track exists if the child came to you through the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS):

If a child was removed from parents through a dependency-neglect proceeding and placed with you as a relative foster home, you may qualify for foster care board rate payments and eventually the Subsidized Guardianship Program (Ark. Code §9-8-204). This program provides ongoing monthly payments after you become the child's legal guardian through the court.

Eligibility requires that the child was in DCFS custody, lived in your approved foster home for at least six consecutive months, and that return home and adoption were both ruled out as permanency options.

This is a fundamentally different path from private kinship care. If DCFS placed the child with you, your caseworker should be guiding you through it. If the child came to you privately — the parent dropped them off, or you stepped in during a crisis — the DCFS subsidized guardianship track doesn't apply unless the child later enters the welfare system.

What Financial Help Does Not Do

An important distinction: receiving benefits for the child doesn't give you consent authority. ARKids First pays for the doctor visit, but your authority to authorize the treatment comes from separate law — Arkansas Code §20-9-602 for medical consent and §6-18-208 for school enrollment. You need both the financial coverage and the legal authority.

Organizing It All

The School and Medical Consent Guide for Arkansas covers the consent and enrollment side — the legal authority pieces that complement the financial benefits. It includes the ARKids First application process alongside the medical consent hierarchy and school enrollment steps, so you handle the money side and the authority side together.

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