Committee hears supporters say expanding grandparent power-of-attorney to all kin preserves family stability

Multiple witnesses told the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee that Senate Bill 58 would expand the state’s grandparent power-of-attorney and caretaker authorization affidavit to other kinship caregivers so they can enroll children in school, consent to medical treatment and address other child needs without seeking costly court orders.

Larry Bresler of Northern Ohioans for Budget Legislation Equality (NOBLE) and Tim Johnson of the Ohio Poverty Law Center emphasized that kinship care — when relatives or close family friends raise children because parents cannot — yields better outcomes than foster care and that Ohio’s current law needlessly limits non-grandparent caregivers. "This would permit them to be able to enroll the child in school and participate in the in their educational processes, obtain medical treatment, and other needs that might that that the child might have that would require a parent's authorization," Bresler said.

Mary Wachtel of the Public Children's Services Association of Ohio told the committee the change would primarily help informal kinship arrangements and cited census-based estimates discussed in testimony that 81,400 Ohio grandparents were raising grandchildren in 2023 and hundreds of thousands of children live with relatives statewide. Latrice ("Yaya") Lumpkin, who identified herself as a kinship caregiver and member of the Ohio Grandparent Kinship Coalition, described the documents as low-cost, notarized tools filed with county juvenile courts that already help grandparents and argued the same access should apply to other relatives.

Witnesses said the expansion would impose no additional state financial burden and could reduce foster-care placements and associated costs by enabling more children to remain with family. The committee held a second hearing on SB58 and recorded no committee vote in the transcript.