SPRING 2023 NEWSLETTER

It’s hard to believe it’s already April!

2023 is moving fast and we want to share with you what our team has been working on as well as upcoming opportunities for you to support our children and families.

One of our caregivers asked us to share this picture of her beautiful goddaughter

CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION MONTH

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, an annual campaign to raise awareness about this issue and its impact on our communities. We want to take this opportunity to stress the importance of ensuring that all children – especially the ones at risk of abuse – are raised in a loving and healthy home.

A relative caregiver is often the only person who can provide that safe and stable home for a child who cannot remain with their parents.

In the 5 years since our founding, we have helped more than 600 relatives working to ensure the safety and stability of more than 700 DC children at risk of abuse, neglect, trauma, or abandonment by their parents. We do this by helping relatives obtain legal custody, financial benefits, housing and other support.

Help us continue supporting DC’s most vulnerable children and their relative caregivers. Your contribution will have a direct and positive impact on their lives.

DONATE

OUR RELATIVE CAREGIVER

COMMUNITY BOARD

Our Relative Caregiver Community Board consists of 30 members who are relatives and godparents raising 35 at-risk DC children.

Our Community Board provides a platform for these remarkable caregivers to share their experiences and valuable insights on what it takes to protect and care for children in times of crisis. Our work is informed by their experiences navigating systemic issues with policies and practices affecting DC kinship families.

Community Board Letter to President Obama

Like many kids in our community, President Barack Obama was raised his grandparents. Our Relative Caregiver Community Board wrote a letter to President Obama with an accompanying portrait of him as a young boy inviting him to support DC kinship families.

READ THE LETTER

Every month, our Relative Caregiver Community Board, meets virtually to discuss activities, updates, and strategy to tackle systemic issues with policies that affect DC kinship families. With Spring coming, we are excited to meet in-person to spend some time together around food, games, and other bonding activities.

ADVOCACY

Testifying at DC Council

Oversight Hearings

As part of our mission to support relative caregivers of the most vulnerable and at-risk DC children whose parents are not able to care for them, we work to educate policymakers about the struggles of DC kinship families. This year, we had the opportunity to testify at DC Council public oversight hearings on DC agency budgets and performance. Our testimony as well as our work is driven by the voices of our Relative Caregiver Community Board, who identify systemic issues that hurt DC children and families.

READ OUR TESTIMONY

DC KINCARE ALLIANCE IN THE NEWS!

The Washington Post

Our Executive Director, Marla Spindel and one of our Community Board members were quoted in this March 2023 Washington Post article about the discriminatory practice of hidden foster care.

READ THE ARTICLE AND SHARE

2023 GRANTS AND RECOGNITION

Thank you to the DC Bar Foundation, our largest single funder, for supporting our Legal Defense Project, through which we represent kinship caregivers in legal matters to ensure the safety and security of the children they raise.

We are so grateful to be a WBAF grantee again this year! This grant will allow us to continue to support DC's at-risk children and relative caregivers, most of whom are grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts and great-aunts.

We are honored to have received our first grant from The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and look forward to partnering to help DC's most vulnerable children and families!

We want to thank the Meyer Foundation for its continued support of our advocacy work to fight systemic injustice and ensure racial and economic equity for DC's under-resourced kinship families.

Finalist: Exemplary Program Supporting Kinship Families

Our unique and innovative one-stop-shop approach to helping the DC kinship community has been recognized nationally. Generations United Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network selected DC KinCare Alliance as one of only 20 finalists nationwide to be designated as an Exemplary Policy, Practice, or Program supporting kinship families.

We will find out this Fall if we have been officially designated as Exemplary, but we understand the intention is to designate all 20 finalists if they meet the upcoming site visit requirements.

The DC Volunteer Lawyers Project (DCVLP) Honors Marla Spindel For Co-Founding the Organization

In 2008, our Executive Director, Marla Spindel, along with Karen Barker Marcou and Jenny Brody, created DCVLP. In the 15 years since its founding, DCVLP has achieved more than they could have ever imagined. On April 20th, DCVLP will celebrate its 15th Anniversary by honoring Marla, Karen and Jenny for their vision and contributions to the organization.