Last week, the White House held a convening on child welfare transformation to announce new policies focused on preventing family separation and supporting and creating opportunities for families and youth. The event included a panel discussion featuring three members of ACL’s Advisory Council to Support Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (SGRG Council), who spoke about the imperative of collaboration across systems and jurisdictions to improve the lives of families who may be at risk of involvement from child welfare systems.
In conjunction with the event, the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) and ACL jointly issued a letter to our respective networks to encourage collaboration to improve support to grandparents raising grandchildren and other kinship caregivers. The letter outlines resources (including funding) available to help the aging and disability networks connect these caregivers to the services and supports they need — and to support a system-wide shift to a “kin-first” approach to child welfare.
There are more than 2.7 million American children being raised within the loving homes of kin and grandparent caregivers. Forty percent of kin and grandparent caregivers are older adults, and 25% have disabilities. Often, they are caring for children who experience disabilities. The federal, state, and local policies and systems, including legal and child welfare systems, are not designed to address the unique needs of these families, often leaving them without the support and resources they need. To address these challenges, the ACL-led SGRG Council, working in collaboration with the RAISE Family Caregiving Advisory Council, included kinship-specific goals and recommendations in the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, which ACL released in 2022.