In May and June of 2022, the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network (a national technical assistance center funded by the Administration for Community Living) hosted five virtual half-day regional convenings. Additionally, one of the Network’s key national partners, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, hosted a virtual half-day tribal convening. These six convenings brought together leaders from various systems within states, tribes, and territories to address challenges and explore promising practices in serving kinship/grandfamilies. They engaged individuals with lived experience, leaders and professionals in kinship navigator programs as well as community- and faith-based organizations. Additionally, the convenings included representatives of the following government systems: Aging, Child Welfare, Disability, Education, Housing, Medicaid/Medicare, Nutrition, and TANF.

Increasingly, government and nonprofit leaders are recognizing the value of engaging individuals with lived experience when creating and enhancing programs and services. This resource offers tips for engaging with caregivers, youth, and parents with lived experience in kinship/grandfamilies so that they can meaningfully contribute to programs and services intended for them. The term “kinship/grandfamilies” refers to all families in which grandparents, other relatives, or close family friends are raising children whose parents are unable to do so.

This Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network webinar facilitated by Dr. Joseph Crumbley offered participants shared/co-parenting strategies that provide well-being, safety, and stability for children in kinship families. (The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network is a national technical assistance center funded by the Administration for Community Living). The webinar provided guidance on how to identify the strengths and benefits of shared parenting for the child, caregivers, and birth parents in kinship families; formulate prerequisites and criteria for assessing whether or not shared/co-parenting is feasible and in the best interest of the child and kinship family; develop strategies to elicit buy-in from caregivers and birth parents to engage in shared/co-parenting; identify barriers and approaches to minimize the challenges of shared parenting; and provide caregivers with dialogues, guidelines, and roles for birth parents that promote and maintain shared/co-parenting.

Generations United produced a set of three tip sheets as quick reference tools for practitioners and advocates who are working with grandfamilies and kinship families from traditionally underserved groups. Based on toolkits, these tip sheets are tailored for addressing the needs of children from American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN), Latino, and African American populations. They help practitioners provide services in a way that is culturally sensitive and effective and also serve as guides for staff orientation/training to work in these communities.

The Child Welfare Information Gateway produced a five-part podcast series throughout 2022 that illustrated ways that states and tribal jurisdictions have supported kinship caregivers. The series includes interviews and group conversations intended to provide beneficial information for child welfare and social work professionals about implementing new services and programs, working across agencies, and improving practice. These podcasts highlight programs in Rhode Island (July 2022), Washington State (September 2022), the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe (September 2022), Nevada (October 2022), and New Mexico (December 2022).

The Child Welfare Information Gateway created a five-part podcast series that illustrated ways that states and tribal jurisdictions have supported kinship caregivers. Part 4 of this series explores the public-private partnership between FosterKinship and the state of Nevada. FosterKinship supports the state by providing both kinship navigator services and foster care licensing services, reducing the number of offices and agencies with which families have to interact to adapt and prepare for becoming a kinship family. FosterKinship also provides programs and services to connect kinship families with services or resources they need to raise healthy children. Topics discussed include:

• Kinship caregivers’ challenge to learn about and access available services and supports,
• The value of combining kinship navigator and foster care licensing services, and
• How reducing the number of points of contact for families helps create stronger, more trusting relationships with the child welfare system.

Both inside and outside the child welfare system, the probability that African American children will live in grandfamilies is more than double that of the overall population, with one in five African American children living in grandfamilies at some point during their childhood. This toolkit is designed to give resources and tips to child welfare agencies, other government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, so they can better serve all African American grandfamilies. It also explores some of the unique strengths and challenges of these grandfamilies, which agencies and organizations need to recognize to provide culturally appropriate supportive services.

A disproportionate number of children in grandfamilies are African American. While African American children comprise 14 percent of all children in the United States, they make up over 25 percent of all children in grandfamilies and 23 percent of all children in foster care. The long history in the United States of enslavement, segregation, economic injustice, and institutional racism contributes to this overrepresentation in the foster care system, and likely also contributes to the larger percentage of African American children in informal grandfamilies. This tip sheet is designed as a quick reference tool for kinship care service providers and advocates, meant to help them design and provide culturally sensitive services to grandfamilies and kinship families who identify as “Black” and “African American.” It also serves as a guide for staff orientation/training to work in this community.

Culturally appropriate services are needed to support Latino families as they navigate kinship care placements, which appeal to the family system fundamental to Latino culture. This toolkit fills a critical gap to help organizations and individuals across the country enhance their understanding and skills to help children and caregivers in grandfamilies thrive. The concrete tools include information on the diversity of Latinos and how to serve them with cultural competence that leverages their many strengths, the benefits and strengths of preserving and restoring cultural identity, as well as practice and policy recommendations for addressing systemic racism and biases that limit existing support to Latino grandfamilies and the children they raise.

Latino children are much more likely than non-Latino white children to live in multigenerational households where three or more generations live, and where the grandparents or other kin may be providing a significant amount of caregiving. Multigenerational caregiving is one of the Latino community’s many cultural strengths. This tip sheet is designed as a quick reference tool for practitioners – including social workers, government and nonprofit workers, and community leaders working with grandfamilies and kinship families who identify as Latino, Latina, or Latinx – to help them provide services in a way that is culturally sensitive and effective. It also serves as a guide for staff orientation/training to work in this community.