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The District Of Columbia Medical Consent Law: Moving Towards Legal Recognition Of Kinship Caregiving, Randi S. Mandelbaum, Susan L. Waysdorf

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

In 1990, in the District of Columbia, over 27,000 children under the age of eighteen, or 23.4% of all children, were living in the care of an adult other than their parent or a foster parent.3 This was a thirty percent increase from the 1980 data for the District of Columbia.4 Nationally, over the past decade, these figures increased sixteen percent.0 Today, for adult relatives, primarily grandmothers, aunts, and close family friends, who step in to raise the children of their relatives or friends, private kinship caregiving is both a legacy and a matter of survival for the next generation.'