According to the Georgia Department of Human Services, more than 15 percent of the state’s children were being raised by family members other than their parents in 2013. There may be many reasons that necessitate this. For some families, parents have died leaving children in need of care. For other families, parents are caught in struggles of drug abuse or mental health problems. Whatever the reason, if you are raising your relatives’ children, you may wonder if you could be eligible to receive financial support to help.
The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services has established the state’s Kinship Navigator Program. This program is designed to provide support for people raising relatives’ children. While a kinship navigator relationship may be informally established, it is possible for people to request and receive child support. This can provide not only financial but also medical care for children.
One of the ways this can happen is by diverting existing child support payments from the originally intended recipient parent to the grandparent or other relative actually taking care of kids. The Division of Child Services may assist in locating parents and even in establishing paternity as part of seeking child support. If support is ordered, this agency may be able to facilitate or participate in enforcing such an order.
This information is not intended to provide legal advice but is instead meant to give Georgia residents who may be raising grandchildren or other family members’ children insight into how they may be eligible to receive child support.
