Welcome to our last newsletter of 2024! Please read on to learn about our next webinar, our latest resources, and other news from around the field. | |
Register for Our Upcoming Webinar! | |
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Five Actions for Supporting Students and Caregivers in Kinship/Grandfamilies: A Toolkit for K-12 School Professionals and Kinship Service Providers
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET
Join us for the rollout of a new practical toolkit designed to help K-12 education stakeholders around the country. The toolkit shares five concrete sets of actions that you can take to more meaningfully and inclusively reach out to and serve grandparents and other kin caregivers and the students they are raising in your community. During this webinar, access tools, learn tips, and hear from education stakeholders who helped create this practical resource, which complements the Generations United 2024 State of Grandfamilies & Kinship Care Report, “Pathways to Success: K-12 Education Support for Kinship and Grandfamilies.” Log off with actionable tips that you can implement in your community to help students and their kin caregivers.
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See our Events page for more upcoming webinars! | |
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. | |
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What's New From the Network? | |
Outreach Learning Community Toolkit
From April 2024 to September 2024, our partners at ZERO TO THREE and the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging (NCBA) held a five-session learning community devoted to sharing outreach strategies for connecting with and supporting kinship/grandfamilies. After the conclusion of the learning community, we worked together to prepare a toolkit to share the learning more widely.
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Five Actions for Supporting Students and Caregivers in Kinship/Grandfamilies: A Toolkit for K-12 School Professionals and Kinship Service Providers
This toolkit contains five actions for K-12 school professionals and kinship service providers to better support students and caregivers in kinship/grandfamilies. The five actions each include specific steps and embedded tools to help children and their caregivers thrive in K-12 settings, and the toolkit is a companion piece to Pathways to Success: K-12 Education Support for Kinship and Grandfamilies, the Generations United 2024 State of Grandfamilies & Kinship Care Report, which is available at www.gureport.org.
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Upcoming Kin Mobilization Learning Collaborative Sessions
In partnership with Subject Matter Expert Marina Nitze, we are continuing this learning collaborative in 2025, with sessions every other Thursday at 1 p.m. ET into March. Join us to explore strategies that your child welfare or partner agency can use to improve kin finding and engagement for children in foster care. Our resource library includes a page with links to all of the recordings and resources from past sessions. Each session focuses on a practice or two from our Kin-Finding Toolkit, created in collaboration with the Child Welfare Playbook. To join the group, sign up here. The next session, which features two strategies, is listed below.
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Thursday, January 16 at 1 p.m. ET
Make a Plan to Keep Youth Connected to Their Supportive Adults: Hear strategies from multiple jurisdictions about how they make and honor plans to keep youth in care connected to all their supportive adults.
Create Life Books for Youth in Care: Hear from Maryland about how their life book templates help youth stay connected to their loved ones. Multiple free downloadable templates will be provided to create life books for children in your child welfare system.
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Monthly Resource
Webinar Wrap-Up: Assessing Kin Caregiver Needs
This short tip sheet, located on the webinar page, offers a quick summary of the information about kin caregiver assessments that our expert presenters from Washington State, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and Bloom Works shared during our October webinar. It also includes links to assessment tools and other information.
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Updated – Kinship/Grandfamilies: Strengths and Challenges
This tip sheet provides background information about kinship/grandfamilies, as well as the latest publicly available national data about the families, accompanied by relevant technical assistance tips.
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Individual Assistance Spotlight | | |
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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. | |
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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 TA request and response.
Request
I recognize that kinship families face many challenges when it comes to school enrollment and educational success. What are some recommendations for better supporting these families in the education system?
Response
Generations United's National Center on Grandfamilies released its annual report on the State of Grandfamilies & Kinship Care, and this year’s focus was K-12 education.
Some of the practice recommendations include encouraging schools to serve as hubs for providing wraparound services for children, training school professionals and kin caregivers on trauma and its impact on educational success, and using inclusive language in schools to acknowledge kinship families. Read the full report and watch the accompanying webinar.
We just published the Network’s accompanying toolkit (as noted above), which is designed for K-12 education professionals at all levels as well as kinship organizations. We will be holding a webinar on Thursday, January 30 (also noted above) to continue our discussion of this important topic. We invite you to join us for this conversation!
To make an individual request, please complete this form and we will get in touch.
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Presentations by the Network | | |
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Earlier this month, USAging Program Manager Leland Kiang, a member of the Network’s management committee, and Network TA Specialist Shalah Bottoms presented during a Title VI ECHO meeting. The recording of their presentation is available on YouTube, and their slides are available here. | |
What's New Around the Network? | | |
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Last Chance to Submit a Conference Session Proposal
Generations United
Deadline: Friday, December 20, 2024
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Generations United’s 23rd Biennial Global Conference, co-hosted by Harbor House in Louisville, KY, will be June 25-27, 2025.
Submit a proposal to lead an educational session that will enhance attendees’ capacity for developing kinship/grandfamilies practices, programs, and policies.
Generations United is also accepting nominations for the Awards Program at the conference. The categories are: Outstanding Older Adult Volunteer Award, Outstanding Youth Volunteer Award, Grandfamilies Award, and Intergenerational Innovation Award.
Register for the conference now and get the early bird rate!
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2025 Health Insurance Marketplace Open Enrollment Period Partner Webinars
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at 3 p.m. ET
Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 3 p.m. ET
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CMS will host three meetings to engage Champions for Coverage organizations, Navigators, Certified Application Assisters, Agents & Brokers, and Partners during the Marketplace Open Enrollment Period. The meetings will focus on current and new Marketplace resources, theme weeks of action, data snapshots, and other Marketplace updates. | | |
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National Caregiver Support Collaborative Webinar: Introducing New Resources to Elevate Family Caregiver Programs
Administration for Community Living, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 12:30 p.m. ET
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This webinar will focus on the National Caregiver Support Collaborative (NCSC), an innovative new initiative offering resources and technical assistance to aging, tribal, and kin caregiver support networks. Six grant awardees are each working on one of the goals and cross-cutting principles of the 2022 National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. Generations United is participating in this endeavor as a subgrantee of USAging’s work in support of Goal #3, which focuses on strengthening services and supports for family caregivers. For this project, Network TA Specialist Kylee Craggett is leading a group of Aging and Child Welfare professionals in the development of an Action Guide to improve support services for kin. This workgroup is part of a multi-year, multi-faceted plan to expand and enhance the capacity of the Aging Network to support caregivers across the lifespan, including kin caregivers. | |
Toolkits about Social Security Benefits and Supplemental Security Income Payments for Children and Survivors Benefits
U.S. Social Security Administration
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This month, the U.S. Social Security Administration released two new toolkits.
The Social Security Benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Payments for Children: A Guide for School Professionals Toolkit offers information on: Social Security, how schools can help, benefits for children with disabilities, Social Security benefits for children, and benefits for children in foster care, plus links to more information. It also includes language that schools can use in email blasts, newsletter articles, and on social media to help spread the word. Please note, however, that some of the recommended language would benefit from slight edits. (For example, instead of “parents and guardians,” we recommend “parents and caregivers” or simply “families.” For more tips like this, see our education toolkit.)
The Social Security Survivors Benefits Toolkit: A Guide for Organizations provides information about Social Security survivors benefits, who is eligible, how to apply, and information needed for applicants to receive benefits, plus links to more information and a flier for families. It also includes language for email blasts and social media posts.
Please note that children being raised by their grandparents (not other relatives) can qualify for Social Security benefits based on the work records of their grandparents in some situations. See https://www.ssa.gov/people/parents/.
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Notable Funding Opportunities
(listed in order of application deadline)
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The GEICO Philanthropic Foundation supports nonprofits focused on educational resources and opportunities in diverse communities across the country, as well as groups that focus on STEM, early childhood learning, and safety; community organizations, particularly those that focus on financial literacy, food insecurity, environmental conservation, animal welfare and advocacy, and health and wellness initiatives; and community organizations that support equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion. Applications are due by Tuesday, December 31, 2024.
American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start Expansion, Early Head Start Expansion, and Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership Grants seek to expand access to high-quality, comprehensive early learning services for newly-enrolled, income-eligible American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) pregnant women, and children from birth to compulsory school age through Early Head Start-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships, or through the expansion of Early Head Start services. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
Tribal Colleges and Universities Head Start Partnership Program Grants seek to support the establishment or enhancement of partnerships with Head Start programs that effectively increase the number of qualified education staff working in American Indian Alaska Native Head Start and Early Head Start programs. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
The Caplan Foundation for Early Childhood is an incubator of promising research and development projects that appear likely to improve the welfare of young children, from infancy through 7 years, in the United States. The Foundation provides funding to support parenting education, early childhood welfare, and early childhood education and play. The Foundation employs a two-step grant application process that includes the submission of both a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) and a Full Proposal–the latter only by those applicants requested to do so. The next deadline for submitting an LOI is Friday, January 31, 2025.
The JA Community Foundation funds nonprofit organizations in the United States serving the Japanese American and greater Asian American communities. They are currently focusing their funding on the Japanese American community, and they fund programs and projects that focus on senior health and services, history, arts and culture, and youth. The Foundation has a two-stage application process that includes the submission of both a Letter of Inquiry (LOI) and a Full Proposal–the latter only by those applicants requested to do so. The next deadline for submitting an LOI is Friday, January 31, 2025.
The RRF Foundation for Aging focuses on improving the quality of life for older people. Their Priority Areas are Caregiving, Economic Security Later in Life, Housing, Social and Intergenerational Connectedness, and Organizational Capacity Building (in Illinois). The next deadline for Letters of Inquiry is Saturday, February 1, 2025.
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Upcoming! – Airing December 20, 2024 and available for streaming after
Kinship/grandfamilies are featured in a new documentary airing/streaming this week! Hear directly from family members who share their experiences and wisdom – both of which are vital to creating meaningful supports. "Grandparents Raising Grandchildren” will air on Nashville PBS this Friday, December 20th at 8 p.m. CT. You can watch it live in middle Tennessee or stream it. Our Network director, Ana Beltran, is honored to have been interviewed for this piece by the filmmaker, Shawn Anfinson, who asked thoughtful, informed questions. Additionally, the Shelby County Relative Caregiver Program, which earned the Network’s Exemplary designation, is spotlighted in the documentary.
December 10, 2024
This Informational Bulletin discusses opportunities available under Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover clinically appropriate and evidence-based services and supports that address health-related social needs (HRSN).
December 5, 2024
Ohio is joining Alabama in allocating a portion of its opioid settlement funds specifically for kinship families. The Kinship Navigator Program – Area Office on Aging of Northwestern Ohio (AOoA), which earned the Network’s Exemplary Program designation, will be leveraging the funds to enhance their support of kinship families impacted by the opioid crisis. This article quotes Arcelia Armstrong, coordinator of the Caregiver Support and Kinship Navigator Programs.
December 5, 2024
Dayton Children’s Hospital has begun construction on new grandfamilies housing. The project includes 26 units and came about after a conversation with the hospital’s community health workers. Each unit will have at least three bedrooms, and there will also be communal spaces and easy access to parks, schools, the hospital, and other needs.
December 5, 2024
The Children’s Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has published a new final rule. The rule revises the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and requires state title IV-E agencies to collect and report to the Administration for Children and Families additional data related to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA) for children in the AFCARS Out-of-Home Care Reporting Population. Most of the rule goes into effect on February 3, 2025.
November 14, 2024
The amendments will authorize Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania to provide additional years of continuous eligibility for children beyond the minimum 12 months required by law. Nine other states (Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, and Washington) also have continuous eligibility provisions for certain populations. Continuous eligibility means that individuals are able to maintain health insurance, regardless of changes in circumstances that may make someone ineligible. It is especially critical for children to continue to receive health services they need, without interruption or having to renew their coverage frequently. Continuous eligibility also helps states by reducing the administrative burden on state agencies that conduct Medicaid and CHIP enrollment and renewals.
November 13, 2024
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is expanding appointment-based services at local Social Security offices. The goal is to reduce wait times, streamline service delivery, and improve the overall customer experience. Effective January 6, 2025, SSA will require customers to schedule an appointment for service in its field offices, including requests for Social Security cards. Customers may also take care of many transactions online or by using automated telephone services.
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, November 7, 2024
This blog post discusses the importance of kinship connections for children in foster care, offering tips for addressing bias and links to help readers learn more.
The ACS is the only source of local statistics for most of the 40+ topics it covers, such as educational attainment, occupation, language spoken at home, nativity, veteran status, and selected monthly homeowner costs. Table S1001 focuses on grandchildren and Table S1002 focuses on grandparents, providing interesting and important data points for the kinship/grandfamilies field.
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) has released $3.7 billion to LIHEAP to help households reduce their home energy costs. A toolkit with outreach materials is available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ocs/programs/liheap/liheap-toolkits#heating-season.
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Please follow the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network on LinkedIn here! |
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All of our previous newsletters are linked on our website, so you can access them anytime. |
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Generations United is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. For more information, read our full statement. | |
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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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