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Happy New Year and welcome to our first newsletter of 2025!
This month, we are acknowledging Human Trafficking Prevention Month. We are also thinking of everyone who has been impacted by the fires in the Los Angeles area
Please read on to learn about our upcoming webinars, our latest resources, and other news from around the field.
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Register for Our Upcoming Webinars! | |
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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 professionals and kinship service providers around the country. The toolkit shares five concrete sets of actions that you can take to more meaningfully and inclusively reach 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 professionals 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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We also have TWO webinars in February! | |
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Building Capacity to Attract Funding for Smaller Kinship and Peer-Led Organizations
2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET
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Kin-Specific Foster Care Licensing: Implementation Progress
1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET
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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? | |
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 is listed below.
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Thursday, January 30 at 1 p.m. ET
Test Your Communications with Kin: Hear from Washington State about how they codesigned and improved kin-facing materials with kin caregivers, and the successful process used to engage kin caregivers in co-designing the kin-specific licensing/approval model standards and forms.
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Monthly Resource
Kinship Peer Mentoring
Kinship peer mentoring can provide a sense of support and understanding to kin caregivers who wish to learn from someone who has experienced a similar caregiving situation. This resource offers information on kinship peer mentoring, research that supports this form of assistance, qualifications of a kinship peer mentor, and tips for finding training and support for kinship peer mentors.
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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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Did you see the “Grandparents Raising Grandchildren” documentary on PBS? It’s less than half an hour long, and it’s available for streaming now. 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. After you watch, head over to LinkedIn to share your reaction with us. | |
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
We want our state to provide monthly stipend payments for grandfamilies outside the foster care system. We seek assistance to learn how other states have accomplished this.
Response
The way most states and tribes try to financially support kinship families who are not part of the child welfare system is through their TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) federal block grant funds. They offer what’s known as “child only” grants to children in the care of their relatives, as is envisioned by federal law. These grants are per month and ongoing until the child becomes an adult or the relative is no longer raising them. Applications for the grants typically only consider the income and assets of the child, not the caregiver, so most children with relatives should receive this support.
There are many strategies that states have used and can use to improve TANF child only and put ongoing assistance into the hands of kinship families who do not have child welfare involvement. Among them are:
- Increasing the child-only amount to mirror or more closely match foster care maintenance payment amounts. In many places, the TANF child-only grants are very low.
- Making the amount per child like foster care maintenance payments, as opposed to only incrementally increasing the amount for each additional child. Incremental increases make it very difficult for a caregiver to provide for 3 or 4 children they did not plan to raise.
- Having a separate application process that is clear and that does not require any caregiver income or asset information, as is consistent with federal intent.
Some states augment their TANF child-only grants with their own funds for another program - but this practice is fairly rare. One of the best examples is from the District of Columbia. They use their own funds to offer grandparent and close relative caregiver subsidies, and they earned the Network's Exemplary designation. DC caregivers can receive these monthly subsidies, averaging over $600 per child per month, in addition to TANF.
Virginia has a Relative Maintenance Payment that had been funded through TANF but has since moved to general state funds. See https://www.dss.virginia.gov/files/division/bp/tanf/manual/Transmittal_76.pdf. It supports relatives (now kin too), but they have to have come into contact with the child welfare agency. The caregiver gets a payment in addition to TANF child-only in order to keep the child out of foster care. The fact that the caregiver kept the child out of foster care has to be verified by the local department of social services (LDSS – the county public child welfare agency).
Other examples of uses of TANF block grant funds to support kin include:
- KinShare in Alabama, which is short-term assistance to kin that uses TANF funding;
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Legal Aid of West Virginia, which receives TANF state block funds to provide legal services to kin caregivers who receive TANF child-only benefits.
The Network is updating Generations United’s policy brief on TANF. Before the update it complete, the existing brief may be helpful.
To make an individual request, please complete this form and we will get in touch.
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The Area Office on Aging of Northwestern Ohio, Inc. (AOoA)’s Kinship Navigator Program helps grandparents and relatives care better and longer for the children they raise. In 2024, the program earned our Exemplary designation. As Caregiver Support & Kinship Navigator Program Director Arcelia Armstrong shared, the designation and technical assistance from our team helped them emphasize their commitment to excellence and share best practices with community partners, kinship families, funders, and more, helping the program secure funding, improve services, and increase its reach.
The Exemplary designation and the Network’s technical assistance to the AOoA of Northwestern Ohio both had ripple effects. The AOoA of Northwestern Ohio’s Kinship Navigator Program provided ideas to an Area Agency on Aging in Washington State on how they could build partnerships to most efficiently reach and serve kinship families in the face of limited staff resources, as they have just one full-time employee. Arcelia and her colleague Marsha Rose were keynote speakers at AgeGuide Northeastern Illinois’s seminar Kinship Care: Supporting Families Through Collaboration, where they shared their best practices with attendees and a panel of experts, which included representatives from the Illinois Department on Aging and the Illinois Department of Child & Family Services, State Representative Natalie Manley, and others.
Finally, Arcelia believes that the designation helped give them the credibility they needed to secure opioid settlement funds in the form of a two-year grant that will help them serve an additional 240 kin caregivers (120 per year). The funds will help them serve more caregivers through their support groups and other activities. They will also be able to use the grant to create educational resources – a podcast and Empowering Kinship Families: Resources for Opioid Recovery and Prevention, a publication that will be distributed at intake and outreach events.
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Presentations by the Network | | |
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On Friday, January 31, Network TA Specialist Shalah Bottoms will be presenting “Equitable Supports for Kinship Families” to the child welfare professionals at Public Children Services Association of Ohio. Presenting alongside her will be GRAND Voice Antoinette James; Karyne Jones, president and chief executive officer of the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging, a Network partner organization; and Network Subject Matter Expert Marina Nitze and her colleague Anissa Pérez. | |
What's New Around the Network? | |
Webinar – Adoption Tax Credit
Families Rising
Tuesday, January 28, 2025 at 3 p.m. ET
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Have questions about how to claim the adoption tax credit? Families Rising’s adoption tax credit expert, Josh Kroll, presents a webinar on the federal adoption tax credit, outlining the steps to file. The focus is on filing for the 2024 tax year, but the webinar also covers applying for the credit for adoptions as far back as 2019. While the webinar is aimed at adoptive parents, it should also be helpful to professionals working with the families. The adoption tax credit has helped many kin caregivers who have adopted their kin, either from within foster care or privately outside of that system. | |
Webinar – Innovation in the Direct Care Workforce: Unlocking Success through Peer Learning Collaboratives (PLCs)
National Council on Aging
Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 2 p.m. ET
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Discover how 14 states are transforming their direct care workforces to support the provision of Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) through the Direct Care Workforce Strategies Center’s Peer Learning Collaboratives (PLCs). During this webinar, participants will hear about how state teams, made up of representatives from across agencies, have come together through the PLCs to share best practices and brainstorm strategies for tackling common challenges. States will share how both peer-to-peer learning and access to national subject matter experts have helped them achieve measurable progress toward strengthening their direct care workforce. | |
Spanish-Language Study Pilot
Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse
Deadline: Wednesday, February 5, 2025
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The Prevention Services Clearinghouse is conducting a pilot to understand the feasibility of identifying and reviewing studies only published in Spanish. They are inviting submissions of studies of any program or service that have been published only in Spanish and do not have current English translations. They are also inviting suggestions for websites, bibliographic databases, or other places the Clearinghouse may consider looking for Spanish-language studies.
El Centro de Información de Servicios de Prevención está llevando a cabo un proyecto piloto para evaluar la viabilidad de identificar y revisar estudios publicados únicamente en español. Invitan al público a enviar estudios de cualquier programa o servicio que hayan sido publicados únicamente en español y que no tengan una traducción actual al inglés. También invitan a sugerir sitios web, bases de datos bibliográficas u otras fuentes donde el Centro de Información pueda buscar estudios en español.
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Kinship Interactive Training/Support Curriculum Available
Creating a Family
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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 will begin the evaluation of this training/support group curriculum in March 2025 and are looking for organizations to join the pilot. There is no charge to participate. Contact info@creatingafamily.org for more information.
The 9-hour training/curriculum is facilitated and interactive and is designed to be used online or in-person, either with a group or 1:1. It is video-based and will include videos of numerous national experts, including Dr. Joseph Crumbley, who is a Network subject matter expert, as well as videos of grandparents, aunts/uncles, and siblings raising their kin.
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School Nurse’s Mental Health Toolkit: Practical Strategies for Helping Students
Virginia Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics
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This toolkit, created in collaboration with school nurses and pediatricians, offers information and guidance related to school avoidance, anxiety/panic attacks, depression, preventing suicide, self-harm, and anger. It also shares coping and relaxation strategies and provides readers with additional resources. | |
Notable Funding Opportunities
(listed in order of application deadline)
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The Housing Assistance Council’s Affordable Housing for Rural Veterans (AHRV) Initiative supports local nonprofit housing development organizations that meet or help meet the affordable housing needs of veterans with low incomes in rural places. Applications are due by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 21, 2025.
Share Our Strength and HealthBegins are launching the second cohort of grant funding for the Medicaid Food Security Partners Program. Share Our Strength will be funding four state-based organizations or coalitions to pursue the creation or implementation of state Medicaid regulatory or administrative changes that promote promising food and nutrition security policy initiative(s), with a special focus on strategies that promote SNAP and WIC enrollment among children and families. Proposals are due by Friday, February 14, 2025.
Point32Health Foundation supports organizations advancing equity in aging in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The Foundation is currently accepting inquiry forms for grants focused on organizing, policy, advocacy, and systems improvement. Completed inquiry forms are due by Thursday, February 20, 2025.
The OJJDP FY25 Multistate Mentoring Programs Initiative is a grant opportunity from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the U.S. Department of Justice. This funding opportunity seeks to support mentoring organizations to enhance and expand mentoring services for children and youth who are at risk or high risk for delinquency, victimization, and juvenile justice system involvement. The Grants.gov deadline is Monday, February 24, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The Application JustGrants deadline is Monday, March 10, 2025 at 8:59 p.m. ET.
The 2025 AARP Community Challenge will award Flagship Grants, Capacity-Building Microgrants, and Demonstration Grants. Applications are due by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
Connecting Kids to Coverage Outreach and Enrollment Cooperative Agreements (CKC) 2025 is a funding opportunity from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Funds may be used to target eligible, unenrolled children and help them enroll in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and to improve retention of eligible children who are already enrolled. Applications are due by Friday, March 7, 2025.
The U.S. Department of Justice FY2025 Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation Notice of Funding Opportunity seeks to provide funding to improve public safety and victim services in tribal communities. Many existing tribal government-specific programs are included in and available through this single coordinated funding opportunity. The deadline to submit SF-424 in Grants.gov is Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The deadline to submit an application in JustGrants is Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 8:59 p.m. ET.
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The Administration for Children, Youth, and Family’s Children’s Bureau and the Office of Family Assistance, both of which are within the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) released this letter together. It seeks to provide guidance and offer ongoing assistance to support states, territories, and tribal grant recipients as they address the basic economic needs of families as an evidence-informed strategy to prevent child maltreatment and ensure children remain cared for in their homes or with relative caregivers. The letter encourages collaboration between Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and child welfare agencies and offers specific recommendations to support that collaboration, including several specific recommendations related to kinship care. Please see the “Individual Assistance Spotlight” above for some successful strategies that complement this guidance.
In December, the Administration for Children and Families published two additions to the Child Welfare Policy Manual regarding access to services provided under title IV-B of the Social Security Act and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Both questions relate to the immigration status of the child, parent, or family members, and both answers affirm that agencies that accept CAPTA and/or title IV-B funds may not deny children access to services based on their immigration status or the immigration status of their parents or family members.
This new law reauthorizes and updates Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, a critical child welfare law that supports kinship families outside of child welfare as well. It includes the following key provisions that go into effect starting October 1, 2025:
- Provides $10 million per year for five years of funding for kinship navigator programs through a competitive grant program, which will be open to nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education, in addition to state, local, and tribal child welfare agencies;
- Clarifies that Title IV-B funds can be used for kinship families and peer-to-peer support programs;
- Provides $5 million per year for five years of funding for evaluations of prevention programs (including kinship navigator programs) through a competitive grant program;
- Requires states to consult with people with lived experience, including kin caregivers and youth, in developing their plans; and
- Increases Title IV-B funding by $75 million annually.
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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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