Kinship Caregivers
Kinship caregivers and suitable others are a wonderful resource for children needing out-of-home care. Over half of all out-of-home placed children are with kinship providers. At the Alliance, we offer specialized training and support for kinship caregivers in addition to the generalized caregiver services available.
Specialized Training for Kinship Caregivers
Kinship Core Training (KCT): KCT is designed to help kinship caregivers develop the skills they need to care for children who have experienced complex trauma. KCT is intended to meet the training requirements for those kinship caregivers pursuing licensing.
Kinship Parenting: This webinar acknowledges the complexities associated with caring for children who are related, including: divided loyalties, redefining roles and relationships, setting boundaries with parents and other relatives, and the range of emotions including anger, resentment, guilt and/or embarrassment that caregivers can feel. Strategies for how to manage family dynamics and conflicts, identify triggers and effectively manage stress are shared.
Building Parental Resilience for Kinship Caregivers: This course teaches kinship caregivers about the importance of self-care and practical ideas for how to do it. Participants will also learn about the behaviors that foster a protective environment for parents and children.
Caregiver Coaching: Kinship 101: This coaching session for caregivers covers the financial, legal, and emotional challenges of raising a relative’s child.
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families Series
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families is a training series developed by Dr. Joseph Crumbley for kinship caregivers. The 6-course series takes a strength-based perspective in outlining different topics that are unique to kinship families and providing strategies for caregivers.
The courses in this series can be completed in any order. Find registration links for all of The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families courses here. Descriptions of each course can be found below.
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Adaptability
This module focuses on the strength of the kinship family’s adaptability to keep children in the family when they are unable to remain with their parents. Caregivers are provided with approaches to assist the family in adjusting and adapting to changes in family dynamics, roles, and relationships.
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Attachment
This module describes the unique characteristics and strengths of attachments between kinship caregivers and their children. Approaches to enhance these attachments are provided.
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Co-Parenting
This module focuses on how caregivers can facilitate co-parenting with the children’s birth parents. Caregivers are provided approaches that utilize the strengths of common goals and pre-existing relationships between the caregiver, birth parents, and children. Learning Objectives: (1) Define co-parenting specific to kinship families (2) Identify the strengths of co-parenting in kinship families (3) Provide approaches for caregivers to engage and involve birth parents in co-parenting
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Healing
This module focuses on how kinship caregivers can minimize the trauma of loss children experience when separated from their birth parents. The sharing of loss and grief between children and their caregivers is a strength of kinship families.
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Identity
This module explains the role caregivers have in the positive identity formation of children in kinship care. Caregivers are equipped with approaches to assist their children in making positive choices and decisions to avoid and disrupt family patterns based on their own values and identities. Learning Objectives: (1) Define and highlight the importance of identity formation/development (2) Explain why kinship families have a significant impact on identity formation (3) Describe how to impact the development of positive identity (4) Identify how to help in the development of identities that disrupt family cycles
The Inherent Strengths in Kinship Families: Legacy
This module discusses how the sharing of legacies is a strength between caregivers and their children. This module also identifies strategies for how caregivers can create new family traditions, rites of passage, and goals that interrupt family cycles.
Alliance CaRES
The Alliance CaRES program offers direct support to you as you care for your relative child or child you know. Their website has information about how to sign up for services, find community assistance and more. You can also get connected directly with a CaRES Mentor who can give you emotional support, share their experiences, and connect you to regional and state resources.