Maryland Kinship Care Program: What Relatives Need to Know

When a child lands in your home overnight because a parent is in crisis, the last thing you need is to spend hours hunting through government websites trying to figure out what help exists. Maryland does have a kinship care program — but it is spread across multiple agencies, and nobody hands you a single roadmap.

How Maryland's Kinship Care Framework Works

Maryland recognizes two broad tracks for relatives raising a child:

Informal kinship care is the path most grandparents and relatives actually use. You take the child in without a court order and without the Department of Social Services placing the child with you. You manage school enrollment through the Education Article § 7-101(c) affidavit and medical consent through the Health-General § 20-105 affidavit (Form DHS/SSA/554). No judge is involved, no foster care license is required, and the parent's legal rights stay intact.

Formal kinship care happens when a child is removed by Child Protective Services and placed with a relative through the foster care system. This track comes with foster care stipends and a DSS caseworker, but it also means court oversight and licensing requirements.

Most families searching for "kinship care program" are actually in the informal track — and that is where state support is thinnest.

The Kinship Navigator Program

Maryland's Department of Human Services funds county-level Kinship Navigator Programs through each Local Department of Social Services. A kinship navigator can help you:

• Identify which affidavits you need for school and medical consent
• Connect you with Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) or SNAP/Food Supplement Program applications through myMDTHINK
• Find local support groups for kinship caregivers
• Navigate the Maryland Children's Health Program (MCHP) enrollment for the child through Maryland Health Connection

Contact your county DSS office and ask specifically for the kinship navigator. Not every county staffs this role the same way, so if the front desk doesn't recognize the title, ask for the family services or kinship care unit.

Key Resources for Maryland Kinship Caregivers

Maryland DHS Kinship Care Portal (dhs.maryland.gov) — publishes the official health consent form (DHS/SSA/554) and links to county DSS offices.

The People's Law Library (peoples-law.org) — maintained by the Thurgood Marshall State Law Library, this is the most thorough free source for understanding informal kinship care law in Maryland, including how the affidavits work and when you actually need to go to court.

Maryland Legal Aid and Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service — provide free legal help to qualifying low-income caregivers if you need to petition for guardianship or are facing an enrollment dispute.

AARP GrandFacts and Grandfamilies.org — national resources that summarize Maryland's kinship care statutes and link to state-specific fact sheets.

What the Program Does Not Cover

Informal kinship caregivers do not automatically receive foster care payments. You are not assigned a caseworker. The state does not send you a checklist of steps. Financial help exists — TCA, SNAP, MCHP, child-only grants — but you have to apply for each one separately.

If you need a single, organized guide that walks through both the school enrollment affidavit and the medical consent affidavit step by step — including which forms to file, where to file them, and what to do when a school or clinic pushes back — our Maryland School and Medical Consent Guide puts the whole process in one place.

The Bottom Line

Maryland's kinship care program gives relatives a legal path to enroll a child in school and consent to medical care without going to court. The pieces are there — but they are scattered across DHS, the school districts, and the judiciary. Start with your county's kinship navigator, and use the People's Law Library for the legal details.

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