What is kinship care?

Kinship care, or family caring for family, is a natural, out-of-home placement option for children that successfully meets their need for safety, permanency and well-being. 

Impact

Better Outcomes for Children

Children in care have already experienced the trauma of being removed from their homes and families. Placing them with strangers only compounds that trauma. Placing them in the homes of relatives or fictive kin reduces the chance for further trauma, while at the same time maintains their connection to their communities and cultures.

Model

A Value for Family

As the only agency in the country that exclusively delivers services to the entire kinship triad (child, caregiver and birth family), our approach is pure kinship. We provide strengths-based, trauma-informed, culturally competent kinship care services that support stability and continuity and maintain a child's cultural identity and contact with their birth family.

Values

What Is Important to Us?

As a nationally recognized leader in kinship care services, A Second Chance, Inc., is dedicated to upholding the highest professional standards. In the service of children, we respect the families and communities we serve, as well as our own staff. This has been a priority since our inception.

How We Have Helped


ASCI has served approximately 31,000 children, 10,000 kinship caregivers and 30,000 birth parents since its founding.

Reunification

70% of our children reach reunification within the first year of service.

70%

Education

98% of our youth graduate high school, compared to the national average of 50%.

98%

Adoption

78% of our children have closed to adoption.

78%
Education
ASCI Celebrates Dr. Ervin Dyer As A Pennsylvania Humanities “Window Keeper”

At ASCI, we believe storytelling has the power to preserve history, strengthen communities, and create lasting connections across generations. That is why we are proud to recognize Dr. Ervin Dyer…

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Community
TRAC Family Services Community Changemaker

At A Second Chance, Inc. (ASCI), we honor organizations that are reshaping communities through vision, commitment, and lived experience. Three Rivers Adoption Council (TRAC) Services for Families is one such…

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ASCI News
A Kin-First Approach in Honor of National Foster Care Month

Each May, National Foster Care Month invites each of us to look more closely at how we care for children when families face crisis and how we keep families together…

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ASCI Youth
A Home Made by Family: Sharda and Vae’s Kinship Care Journey

Each month, A Second Chance, Inc. (ASCI) amplifies the voices of our kinship families. As an agency committed to establishing safe, secure, and nurturing environments for children entrusted to relatives…

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