Generations United’s National Center on Grandfamilies, along with the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and Think of Us, held a webinar to overview and explain their 2024 Kinship Unity Action Agenda.
This agenda, introduced by Generations United’s Executive Director Donna Butts, was created through a convening of national advocates with professional and lived experience with grandfamilies and kinship care to identify priorities for policy work. The resulting agenda outlines nine policy priorities:
- Kinship caregivers must receive equitable financial support.
- Ensure that policies meet kinship families’ basic needs.
- The lived experience of kinship families should be fully integrated into policy review, design, and implementation. As kinship caregiver Autumn Adams said, “those of us who have lived experience are the ones who must bear the burden of the shortcomings of policy.”
- Racial and cultural equity and respect and support for tribal sovereignty must be ensured.
- The child welfare system must respect, value, and fully support kinship families.
- Affordable, high-quality legal representation should be provided for kinship families.
- Effective strategies to change the public narrative on kinship care should be supported.
- Specialized programs that meet the unique needs of kinship families should be developed.
- Social science research on all kinship families must be done to ensure inequities across the system are addressed.
The agenda includes specific action items and recommendations for accomplishing each goal, as well as more detailed lived experiences that support them. The webinar included stories from kinship caregivers and concluded with a call to action for supporting this agenda, which can be done by filling out the form here.
By Bayley Levine, Policy Intern
