Register for Our Upcoming Webinars! | | | |
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Aging Network and Child Welfare Collaborations to Support Kinship/Grandfamilies
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
| | Child welfare and the Aging Network are two of the most critical systems serving kinship/grandfamilies. They often provide complementary yet uncoordinated services that could be leveraged to fill gaps and better serve the families. Join us to hear directly from two leaders at Area Agencies on Aging in Michigan and Pennsylvania who successfully collaborate with their community’s child welfare system. Learn how they enhance their supports and reduce gaps in service delivery to kinship/grandfamilies. To set the stage for what they’ll share, you’ll also hear an overview of the strengths and challenges of kinship/grandfamilies, along with basics about how the child welfare and Aging Network systems operate and individually support the families. Our presenters are Leland Kiang from USAging; Brooke Mainville from Region 9 Area Agency on Aging in Alpena, Michigan; Sara McDonald from Lackawanna County Area Agency on Aging in Scranton, Pennsylvania; and the Network’s Kylee Kern. | | | |
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TANF and Kinship/Grandfamilies
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
| | TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) child-only grants are often the only source of ongoing financial support for children raised by grandparents and other relatives with no parents in the home. Join us to explore data for each state on TANF child-only grants, newly compiled by our partners at Child Trends. Learn how your state compares to others, along with strategies and policies that other states, tribes, and territories have used to improve kinship/grandfamilies’ access to this important support. Log off with ideas on how to improve supports to children in kinship/grandfamilies. Our presenters are Child Trends Research Scientist Brittany Mihalec-Adkins, Ph.D. and Network Director Ana Beltran, JD. | | | | Since we launched our LinkedIn page in September 2023, we’ve shared dozens of resources, funding opportunities, and training events. We invite you to follow our page to keep up with our latest news between monthly issues of this newsletter. | | What's New From the Network? | |
Apply for our Exemplary Kinship Practice Designation
Does your agency or organization have a practice that supports kinship families? Would you like your work to be recognized nationally as "Exemplary" and elevated and shared with others who can use it to help kinship families in their communities?
We're casting a wide net in our search for "practices." A practice may be kin-specific or more general and implemented in a way that helps kinship families. It might be anything from a form a school district provides to allow kin to enroll the children they are raising in school to an online, searchable database of services for kin. This opportunity complements our previous Exemplary Program initiative.
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Leveraging Family Resource Centers to Support Kinship Families
We partnered with the National Family Support Network to host learning collaboratives that sought to enhance the connection between Family Resource Centers and kinship navigators. The idea was to identify and address challenges in three selected states that provide services in urban, rural, and underserved communities: Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio. This tip sheet presents key takeaways from those learning collaboratives.
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We have TWO new videos to share! Access them on LinkedIn, whether or not you have a LinkedIn account: Video 1 and Video 2. If you have a LinkedIn account, be sure to comment, react, and otherwise share these videos to help us spread the word about the Network and the resources we offer! | | Individual Assistance Spotlight | | | | The Network is responding free of charge to individual technical assistance (TA) requests from professionals who work in systems and organizations that serve kinship/grandfamilies. To request assistance on the array of issues impacting kinship/grandfamilies, please complete our request assistance form. | | |
We answer questions and respond to requests of all sizes. Some questions focus on a very specific topic and/or location, while others are much broader. Below, we share an example of a TA request and response.
Request
How have the kin-specific approval standards impacted interstate requests/cases for kin caregivers and children in child welfare? Have approval timeframes been shortened?
Response
One of our subject matter experts, Marina Nitze, explains that it's still early, but the expectation is that the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) process should be dramatically simpler and faster - especially between two states that have wholly adopted the model standards. However, we expect the transition period to be complicated for ICPC, because so many agencies will be in different stages of adopting the new kin licensing, and it's a lot to keep track of. You can check every state's status on their ICPC page: https://www.icpcstatepages.org/.
Here is a recording of a webinar with the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (AAICPC) on some of the expected benefits and challenges that come with kin-specific approval standards:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kjDESd6fxtZeIFcWQ20YjJDaNZDmEnl2/view?usp=drive_link.
Additionally, we are aware of one state that is working on publishing a paper where they tracked the (positive) impact the new kin licensing had on ICPC timeframes, and we will share it when it becomes available.
You can review all of the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network’s resources on kin-specific approval standards at https://www.grandfamilies.org/Resources/Foster-Care-Licensing.
To make an individual request, please complete this form and we will get in touch.
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A group of foster parents started Foster Adopt Connect in 2000 as a way to support each other. Now, 25 years later, the organization has grown to include 300 staff who deliver more than 20 programs in Kansas and Missouri.
Among their work, Foster Adopt Connect partners with families in which a child is being raised by a relative or family friend. Because of their breadth of services, the organization is able to partner with kinship families throughout their journeys, offering a continuum of care from prevention to behavior intervention, depending on the families’ needs.
A few years after starting their kinship navigator program and creating a program model for it, Foster Adopt Connect contacted the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network for guidance on their program design. Barb Kempf, LMSW, President of Family Programs and a lifelong child welfare professional, asked the Network to review “absolutely everything” and help them identify program model gaps and considerations for improvement. In response, a team of Network staff provided a written analysis and recommendations, which they discussed with Barb and others at Foster Adopt Connect.
Barb explained that the Network made recommendations that enhanced how the program serves kinship families. “The team’s work was thorough, in-depth, professional, and backed by a true understanding of our population,” Barb said. For example, the model was designed to survey families at the end of their time working with the kinship navigator program; now, following advice from the Network, they survey families within three weeks of starting to work with them, which helps staff refine their services as they’re working with each family.
Barb shared what stands out about the Network’s assistance: the Network’s ability to truly know the Foster Adopt Connect organization. More than a year after working together, Network staff continue to reach out to Barb at Foster Adopt Connect to share resources, connect them with other programs, and alert them of things coming down the pike. Speaking about the Network, Barb said, “We’ve never gotten lost among all that they do and all who they work with.”
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| Presentations by the Network | | |
- Last week, USAging Program Manager Leland Kiang represented the Network at the 2025 National Title VI Training & Technical Assistance Conference in Minneapolis. He co-presented with the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and Choctaw Nation. He was honored to be invited by the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to present about grandfamilies in Indian Country, along with ACL’s Sonya Begay, who is also a Generations United GRAND Voice.
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If you are attending any of the following upcoming conferences, we hope to see you! | |
- On Monday, March 31, Generations United Deputy Executive Director Jaia Lent will co-present a workshop with the National Indian Child Welfare Association's David E. Simmons at the National Indian Child Welfare Association’s Protecting Our Children Conference in Orlando. She will be part of the closing session panel on Wednesday, April 2, and she will join Network Assistant Director Melissa Devlin at the Network’s exhibit table during the conference.
- On Thursday, April 3, Network Director Ana Beltran will present “Helping Kinship Families Thrive with Respite Services” at ARCH Respite's 2025 National Lifespan Respite Conference in Huntsville, Alabama. Ana and Network Technical Assistance Specialist Shalah Bottoms will also be staffing a Network exhibit table at the conference.
- On Wednesday, April 9, Network Director Ana Beltran and Subject Matter Expert Heidi Redlich Epstein, from the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, will present “Partnering to Provide Legal Services for Kinship Families: Tips and Tools” at the Child Welfare League of America conference in Washington, DC. Network Assistant Director Melissa Devlin will staff the Network’s exhibit table at the conference.
- On Wednesday, April 23, Network Technical Assistance Specialist Kylee (Craggett) Kern will co-present “Family Caregiver Services and Supports: Resources and Program Highlights” during the American Society on Aging’s On Aging conference in Orlando. Also on Wednesday, Generations United GRAND Voices Support Coordinator Robyn Wind will be part of a panel, “Beyond Generations Summit: BIPOC Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.”
| | What's New Around the Network? | |
Join Us at the Generations United Conference
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 through Friday, June 27, 2025
Louisville, Kentucky
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| The 23rd Generations United conference, co-hosted by Harbor House, will bring together hundreds of professionals, educators, caregivers, advocates, and enthusiasts from around the world to learn, connect, and share innovative practices and programs on a range of intergenerational topics, including a pre-conference intensive and a full conference track on kinship/grandfamilies. | | | |
Webinar – MAPP Kinship Programs
Children’s Alliance of Kansas
Tuesday, March 25, 2025, at 1 p.m. ET
| | Children’s Alliance wants to support you in serving kinship families. Join this webinar to learn more about their MAPP Kinship training programs and how they may be right for the families you serve. MAPP – the Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting – is an internationally used training approach for kinship and foster parents. The goal is for kinship and foster parents to have an effective, integrated learning experience linking not only trauma-informed training content, but professional assessment, skills-based learning, and peer support. | |
Kinship Interactive Training/ Support Curriculum Pilot
Creating a Family
Deadline to Indicate Interest: Tuesday, April 1, 2025
The nonprofit Creating a Family has developed a Kinship Interactive Training/ Support Curriculum that can be used with kin caregivers, whether child welfare system involved or not, as in-service training, pre-service training, or with support groups. They are looking for organizations to work with them by utilizing this curriculum and collecting data for the evaluation. There is no charge to participate. The curriculum is facilitated and interactive and is designed to be used online or in-person with a group or 1:1. It is video-based and will include videos of experts, including Network Subject Matter Expert Dr. Joseph Crumbley, as well as videos of grandparents, aunts/uncles, and siblings raising kin. For more information, contact info@creatingafamily.org.
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Kin-Specific Foster Home Approval: Recommended Standards of National Organizations
Multiple National Organizations
The Kin-Specific Foster Home Approval Standards are now fully edited, updated, and designed with embedded tools, including a Kin Caregiver Assessment – all available free of charge. An array of partners, including Generations United and the Network, created these Standards to assist child welfare agencies in implementing the commonsense flexibility of allowing separate, tailored foster care standards for grandparents and other kin. Many of you have already been using these Standards as a Google document, and now they are available as a PDF. A Spanish version will be coming soon, as well.
| | Notable Funding Opportunities | | |
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Funding for Families
Gift of Adoption provides grants of up to $15,000 to qualified applicants to remove prohibitive financial barriers to complete the adoptions of children in vulnerable circumstances. Applications are accepted year-round. Families should apply before the adoption is finalized. One of Gift of Adoption’s priorities is helping to complete kinship adoptions.
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By Michele Cohen Marill, MindSite News, March 13, 2025
This article is part of a series that is examining the experiences of children who have lost a parent to COVID, gun violence, and opioid overdoses. It tells the story of Libby Walker and her daughter, Heaven Leigh, and describes Libby’s life now as she raises her three granddaughters in the wake of her daughter’s death. The article mentions a recent U.S. Senate hearing focused on older adults and the opioid epidemic, which featured testimony from a Generations United GRAND Voice. Generations United Deputy Executive Director Jaia Peterson Lent is quoted in the article, as well.
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All of our previous newsletters are linked on our website, so you can access them anytime. |
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The Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network is the first-ever national technical assistance center for those who serve grandfamilies and kinship families. It was created to help guide lasting, systemic reforms. The Network is a new way to collaborate, to work across jurisdictional and systemic boundaries, to eliminate silos, and to help one another and be helped in return. Thank you for being part of it.
We'd love to hear from you! Please send any feedback on this newsletter to mweiss@gu.org.
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The Network is supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $9,950,000 with 95 percentage funded by ACL/HHS and $523,684 and 5 percentage funded by non-government sources. The contents are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
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