This September 2021, please join CWLA for a special recognition of all the relatives, extended family members, and tribes and clans who provide round-the-clock protecting and nurturing for children, either through informal family arrangements or child protective services. Nearly three million kinship caregivers across the country provide safety, support, cultural ties, and affection for the children in their care. Unique family circumstances cause stress for relatives, parents, and children including health and mental health challenges, financial and other burdens. Yet kinship families — grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and non-related extended family members — prevail. Let’s use Kinship Care Month to recognize their dedication!
Just as families have histories, CWLA has a kinship care history, too. This year marks CWLA’s three decades of caring, collaborating, and advocacy on behalf of kinship caregiving families. We look forward to honoring Kinship Care in multiple ways this September. We will be posting on our website a Timeline of our kinship care endeavors and hope you will do the same. Also, look for an article in the upcoming issue of Children’s Voice magazine describing CWLA’s policy, program, and practice contributions to the field for kinship care which identifies resources that may be of interest.
CWLA especially wants to recognize your support of kinship caregivers. Please send in photos, videos, or quotes which will be collected and posted on CWLA’s website in celebration of Kinship Care Month. You can submit a .jpg image or MP4 file to Samantha Carter at scarter@cwla.org. The deadline to submit is Monday, August 30.
And because we should be recognizing and supporting kinship caregiving families every month, in October we will be offering a special Open Enrollment training for agency staff to learn CWLA’s Traditions of Caring and Collaborating Trauma Informed Model of Practice for Kinship Family Information, Support, and Assessment. The training announcement will be released soon.
CWLA has additional valuable kinship care publications which you can find in our online Bookstore inlcuding: “Kinship Care and Child Welfare: New Directions for Policy and Practice,” a special double issue of Child Welfare, Journal of Policy, Practice, and Program, focusing on kinship families and the successes and challenges they experience, with a view toward assuring a comprehensive system of kinship care that is inclusive of all such families.
Please also see Reflections on Kinship Care: Learning from the Past, Implications for the Future in which kinship care leaders share their own personal and professional experiences and perspectives to highlight practice values, legislation and policy, research, support, and advocacy for kinship caregivers.
