Does Grandparent Income Count for Colorado Works Child-Only Grant?

The Short Answer: No, Your Income Doesn't Count

Under Colorado Works rules (9 CCR 2503-6), when a relative applies for a child-only grant as a non-needy caretaker, the caregiver's income and assets are entirely excluded from the eligibility calculation. That means your Social Security, pension, wages, retirement savings, and your spouse's income are all irrelevant to whether the child qualifies.

The assistance unit consists of the child alone. Only the child's own countable income matters.

What Counts as the Child's Income

Most children in kinship care have little or no income of their own. But if any of these apply, they're counted:

• Social Security survivor benefits paid on behalf of the child
• Child support payments received directly by the household for the child
• Court-ordered trust distributions going to the child

What's excluded from the child's income: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments. If the child receives SSI, those payments are fully excluded, and an SSI-receiving child is removed from the assistance unit calculation without reducing benefits for siblings.

How CBMS Handles the Exclusion

Colorado's Benefits Management System (CBMS) is the backend engine that processes eligibility for Colorado Works, Medicaid, and SNAP. When a county eligibility worker codes a case as a non-needy caretaker child-only case, CBMS is supposed to automatically exclude the caregiver's income from the child's TANF determination.

The problem is that CBMS doesn't always get coded correctly, especially when the initial application comes through the PEAK portal. If the system asks for your income and you enter it (as you should — honestly), the automated logic sometimes treats it as part of the child's household income and generates a denial.

This is a known administrative issue, not a policy barrier. If you get a denial that seems to count your income:

1. Call your county Department of Human Services and ask for a case review
2. Specify that you're requesting a "non-needy caretaker relative child-only" Colorado Works case
3. Ask the eligibility worker to verify that your income was excluded from the budgetary unit under 9 CCR 2503-6, Section 3.604.2.D.3.a

The county worker can recode the case in CBMS and reprocess the determination.

Why This Matters for Other Benefits

The income exclusion is specific to Colorado Works child-only grants. Other programs use different rules:

• SNAP (food benefits): the caregiver's income counts, because SNAP evaluates the entire household that purchases and prepares food together. A grandchild under 18 living with a grandparent is part of the same SNAP household.
• Health First Colorado (Medicaid): if the caregiver doesn't claim the child as a tax dependent, the caregiver's income is excluded from the child's Medicaid household under MAGI rules. Most kinship caregivers benefit from this.
• CCCAP (child care): evaluated against the caregiver's income, not the child's alone.

Each program has its own household and income rules, which is one of the most confusing parts of the benefits system. Our Colorado Kinship Financial Help guide breaks down every program's income rules in one place, with a comparison table showing what counts and what doesn't.

See more Colorado guides →