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Centering the Rights of Grandfamilies: A Critical Conversation on Supporting the Health and Well-being of Grandfamilies
In December, the world observes Universal Human Rights Month as a time to reflect upon the way we treat others and how we can work together to fight for the basic rights of all human beings. When we reflect upon the current state of children and families in the United States, there are evident inequities that continue to strip families of these basic rights. Further, as being with family is a human right, we must do better to prioritize the basic needs of kinship families, including grandfamilies, who are often overlooked and under-resourced.
Generations United State of the Grandfamily Report highlights the areas where we must improve supports for grandfamilies’ nutrition, health, and overall wellbeing by addressing their basic needs like food security. ASCI had the opportunity to speak with Generations United Executive Deputy Director, Jaia Lent, and Assistant Director of Generations United’s National Center on Grandfamilies, Jamarl Clark, to discuss why it is critical to prioritize the rights of grandfamilies in kinship care and the work Generations United continues to do to support grandfamilies directly and through policy advocacy.
Can you please discuss the importance of grandfamilies in kinship care and how recognizing this familial structure in social work is critical?
Jaia Lent: I think families can look a lot of different ways, and we see grandfamilies and kinship care as a reflection of the strength of families over the years, for decades, and centuries. When families have hard times and parents can’t care for children, extended family steps in to care. Our child welfare system is only recently starting to recognize that it is the natural way to care for each other. That is the way families should function and be supported rather than jumping to find a stranger or someone unfamiliar to take care of that child and pull them out of everything familiar to them. So, when we look at grandparents and other relatives being the structure and the support for children, we believe that’s the way child welfare should be prioritizing supporting children and families.
Jamarl Clark: To add to that, recently there was a situation. My grandma was connected to her best friend whose granddaughter passed away while in childbirth. She had two kids. So immediately the two went to their great-grandma. She stepped in, and already had the two great-grands but she also raised her granddaughter. So now she’s dealing with the system, and we’ll probably get into this a little bit deeper, but she doesn’t know how to navigate the system and understand that she is a part of kinship care. There are so many things that come with that. With the great-grandchildren being with her, you have a cultural identity – someone who looks like them, and permanency – showing that things are stable. So, it’s not too out or too shaky for those two great-grandchildren. Jaia is right. People are starting to recognize that.
Generations United’s three values are diversity, equity, and inclusion. With this month being National Human Rights Month, how can nonprofits and the child welfare system work together to ensure that grandfamilies are receiving the support they need to care for their grandchildren, both formal and informal?
JL: When we talk about human rights, a key to human rights is meeting basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter, right? That is critical. When these families who were not expecting to raise these children, step into this role, we need to make sure that they have access to the resources to be able to meet children’s basic needs. Also, fundamental, I believe, to basic human rights is a sense of belonging, cultural identity, and family identity. Yet with the way that the child welfare system is set up, so often those kinship families, grandfamilies, are raising children without the benefit of a foster care payment to help provide for the child’s basic needs.
The good news is that children raised by relatives do have those family connections and cultural identities by staying with family. But by keeping children out of foster care, grandparents or other relatives often are not able to access the same support that kids in foster care with non-relatives get. Alternatively, children in foster care with non-relatives often report feeling stripped of their cultural identity and family identity. So, the traditional way the child welfare system has been operating essentially tells children they either get their basic needs or they get a sense of belonging and cultural identity. You can’t have both. When we fully support kinship families, we provide for their basic needs and promote belonging and cultural identity. Children and families shouldn’t have to choose between those two. So, nonprofits and child welfare can support prioritizing kin for children when they can’t be raised by their parents, but also supporting them fully so they don’t have to choose.
JC: I think collaboration is key, but also what goes with that is policy advocacy because a lot of times policymakers don’t understand what it entails and why formal and informal families need those comprehensive supports. Often, these families may not even recognize themselves as grandfamilies from a cultural standpoint. It’s common to hear, ‘I’ve always been caring for the kids.’ However, it’s crucial to ensure that these families also have access to the necessary resources and tailored programs that cater to their specific needs. Because that great-grandmother I spoke about previously, thought she had to choose. She didn’t know there would be some benefits to taking the kids on. All she knows is she probably has retirement and it’s about to go out the door. Now she knows that she may qualify for SNAP and different resources.
JL: I think that’s a really good point because often families are just doing what’s natural. Family taking care of family is just what they do. They don’t necessarily identify as a kinship care family or a grandfamily. That language may not resonate with them. They are grandparents, aunts, uncles. They don’t use language that a lot of the systems use when they try to do outreach. So, nonprofits and child welfare systems need to be using language that helps people self-identify and feel connected to something that they can go to for help.
In what ways can child welfare agencies better equip grandparents who take care of their grandchildren?
JL: I think it’s important to acknowledge that often these families are not expecting to step into the role of kinship care or caregiver. So, they are not planning to take care of another child. They may have been saving for retirement and suddenly they take on the cost of another child. So, there’s a need to help connect families and provide families with financial resources to help. I think we have to start with making sure that they have their basic needs met. Often child welfare goes to talking about discipline, parenting, and those kinds of things. Those are important conversations, but if I’m afraid I can’t get food on the table to feed my family, I’m not in a place to have those other conversations. When we think about what systems can be doing to support families, we need to start with where the family is at and what they’re concerned about, which is often just making sure that the child is safe, and protected, and that their well-being and basic needs are provided for. And then from there, listen to the families about what they need and build a support structure to address their concerns around that. So, with that comes things like respite care, legal support and services, support groups, mental health supports, and all of those other pieces that can encircle the family to address other complex challenges.
JC: I think connecting them to community programs is important. There are so many community programs out there that the system can connect families with. These families can get their needs met. With food insecurity, you may have an organization that’s giving out food, such as a food pantry and they go weekly. Again, my grandma’s a running theme here. She goes to a pantry, she makes sure that her friends go to the pantry as well. So that’s just something to just keep in mind with building a bridge of utilizing the community. Usually, families are going to trust the community first before the system because the system is interpreted in many different ways, given your experience or somebody else’s experience. It’s a trust factor.
JL: I affirm that. Related to that is the value of peer-to-peer connections. We routinely have grandfamilies say “Connecting with this person in the support group literally saved my life.” There’s just trust that naturally comes with connecting with someone else who’s been there. So, we have a GRAND Voices Network at Generations United, which is a group of kinship caregivers across the country that raise their voices and guide us in our work and advocacy; then we also provide them with information, resources, and skill-based training around advocacy. They instantly value connections with each other. There is trust and a willingness to connect with others who have been there but are not there with professionals and systems right away. Trust needs to be built much more over time with those in systems and understandably so. Those peer supports are really critical for helping families right out of the gate.
Can you further talk about the importance of governmental benefits in food security for kinship families?
JL: I think that in our country there has long been a willingness to provide a foster care stipend for an unrelated person who steps in to care for a child. You weren’t expecting or planning to care for this other child and so we will pay you to provide for the basic needs of the child. When it comes to family stepping in to care for children, somehow there’s this thought that because you are related to the child and love the child this much, that magically makes food appear on the table. It doesn’t make any sense. This child has the same needs as a child who’s placed in an unrelated foster family in terms of getting fed, doctor visits, and extracurricular activities to grow and thrive. We need to provide support and connections to benefits to those relatives who step into care for children just as we do that for foster parents who are stepping into care for children. The children have the same needs.
JC: I was just thinking about how the biggest issue has been income. Grandparents’ income is based on if they have a job or retirement benefits, and, whatever they come with and how, sometimes puts them at a disadvantage with regard to how much SNAP they get. So, you have some people who are advocating that support shouldn’t be based on their income. Can it not be based on the child? The child is the one who has the need. The child is with them. When they come to the table with what they have, they may be limited in the resources they can get. Nowadays, you pretty much have to be making zero to get what you need. It shouldn’t have to be like that.
JL: It’s like the grandparents are punished for saving for retirement. Too often policies won’t give give kinship families benefits until you’ve spent down your retirement funds and are down to zero. We need to be thinking about how we can provide support so that they can take on and care for a child without having to lose everything that they’ve saved for and move into poverty before they qualify for support to care for the children. Research has always been there and there is this growing body of research that makes it incredibly clear that children do best with relatives. So, the child welfare system is starting to catch up to recognize the need to prioritize relatives for children when they can’t remain with their parents but has not quite caught up with the importance of providing full support and tailored services to relatives in providing for children.
A Second Chance, Inc. knows how to do this but across the country, there is just so much need to grow to recognize that we need to start with relatives. We need to prioritize relatives. We should start with unrelated foster care, then maybe if you find a relative, okay. We need to start with relatives, and we need to support them. So, I think that we’re making progress in understanding children do better with relatives, but we still have a long way to go way to recognize that those relatives need the support and services that we have long given unrelated foster parents to care for children.
JC: I agree. I think the whole National Human Rights Month theme says that this group exists, and they have rights as well. They should not be forgotten. It should not be an assumption that because you’re a relative, a grandparent, or any of those roles, you can just do without support. Going back to the great-grandmother, she has a choice in this, but the fact is she loves her family. She wants to be there for these children. So, love goes a long way, but it is important to have some resources to help support not only the young people but to support the caregiver. That’s another topic for another day of making sure that they’re taken care of with their mental health and their wellness. We just did a State of the Grandfamily Report about mental health and emotional wellness, and that’s something that’s being elevated even more in our society.
JL: I really appreciate what you said Jamarl, love goes a long way, and it is critical. It also does not put food on the table.
JC: And children deserve both. They deserve the love, support, and identity that comes with being raised by family, and they also deserve to have their basic needs met.