(Posted 2026 September)
By Maggie Moreland, Kinship Care Unit Supervisor
It was early evening when a call came in that a family that had been working with the Department of Family Services for several months was in crisis. It was determined that the mother was in immediate need of mental health services, leaving 13-year-old James* in need of a foster care placement.
The kinship team quickly started searching for relatives, however most relatives were elderly or out of state and unable to take a teen boy who desperately wanted to finish out the school year with his friends.
Enter the neighborhood community. Neighbors, Anne and Caleb Blake, got word from their child, who was friends with James, about what was going on. Anne and Caleb reached out to the department to inquire what they could do to help. The kinship navigator explained that because they had a pre-established relationship with the family and James, they could be considered a kinship placement under the definition of fictive kin. This meant we could complete a waiver that would allow James to be placed with them immediately and remain in his community and school.
There was a problem though in that the family was out of town for another week and could not take immediate placement. That’s when the neighborhood really stepped up and started to work on a plan to keep James in their community. Another family reached out saying they could be a placement option and then a neighbor reached out saying they could keep James until the identified family returned from out of town.
Ultimately it was worked out that James was able to be placed with Anne and Caleb and remain on the same street that he lived. His neighborhood truly stepped up and wrapped themselves around the family and continued to support the family in the hope that James could return to the care of his mother.
The happiness and comfort James felt by remaining in his school and neighborhood with people who loved him shows that family is not always blood related and fictive kin relationships are often an important piece of the kinship puzzle.
*Names changed to protect confidentiality.
This article posting is part of the Foster Family News monthly newsletter designed to keep foster parents informed about all the new and notable happenings in Fairfax County.
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