Rethinking Kinship Care in Thailand: A Dual Imperative for Protection and Reform

Kinship care is widely promoted as a culturally appropriate and protective form of family-based alternative care and is endorsed by global policy frameworks that prioritise family-based over institutional provision. However, evidence increasingly highlights that kinship care requires adequate support, oversight and investment to ensure children’s safety and well-being. In Thailand, kinship care presents a complex paradox. Formal kinship care remains rare and under-resourced, while informal arrangements are widespread, involving an estimated 3 million children. These arrangements frequently arise not from assessed child protection need, but from poverty, migration and limited public investment in parental and social protection systems. In this context, widespread unsupported informal kinship care contributes to continued reliance on residential provision, helping to explain why deinstitutionalisation efforts stall despite policy commitment. Drawing on national mapping exercises, child protection investment analysis and population-level survey data, this article examines the scale, drivers and implications of kinship care in Thailand. It argues that while kinship care remains a valued family-based option, its protective potential is compromised when separation is structurally driven, and placements are unregulated and unsupported. The article advances a dual reform agenda: strengthening formal kinship care within the child protection system, while reducing reliance on large-scale informal arrangements by addressing the structural and socioeconomic factors that separate children from their parents. Thailand’s experience offers lessons for other middle-income countries seeking to align family-based care reform with sustainable deinstitutionalisation.