The Child Welfare Information Gateway website has really useful information on a variety of topics involving children. This link is specifically about kinship adoption. There info about all sorts of adoption issues is worth checking out as well.

Kinship adoption previously accounted for over half of all adoptions, but currently they are less popular. Two-fifths of adoptions are primarily private agency, kinship, or tribal adoptions.

In 1992, for example, stepparent adoptions (a form of kinship adoption) alone accounted for two-fifths (42 percent) of all adoptions.

Keeping the Family Tree Intact Through Kinship Care
is a website that I located that addresses the subject of kinship adoptions.

According to their site, there are more than l.3 million American children are being raised by relatives other than their parents, and grandparents raising their grandchildren has soared more than 40 percent in the last decade. Grandparents raising grandchildren seems to be increasing steadily. This is often due to the inability or unwillingness of parents to be able to care for their children properly. Drugs and alcohol abuse might be involved.

The concept of families keeping children within a family is a very strong tradition in many cultures. There are times that I wish that in my own culture that the tradition was stronger - that when a child was born into a family it was embraced and cherished more often. If birth parents are unable to care for their child, I like the concept of first looking to extended family members. To remain within their original family is often a positive situation for children and I believe that is what should happen whenever possible.

Like open adoptions in general, kinship adoptions must have many of the same issues, but some unique challenges as well. I admire and support families who are able to create kinship adoptions. However, I also acknowledge that they must also present some challenges which are specific to that type of adoption.