It's All Relative: Supporting Kin­­­ship Care Video Series

Highlights the role agency resources and family support can play in helping kinship families face challenges. This video discusses an aunt's decision to become a full-time caregiver for her niece and her niece's daughter, and the importance home visits played in the transition.

Spotlights how agency support and resources helped one kinship family identify creative solutions to challenges they faced. In this video, a parent reflects on her family's experience with the kinship program and how it enabled her to connect and collaborate with her kinship son's biological family.

Highlights the significant impact agency staff have on the kinship and foster parent experience and in helping families serve as a resource for the birth families of the children in their care. This video presents one family's story of becoming a kinship resource and how support from their foster care specialist guided their decision.

Addresses the critical importance of having a strong support network to face the challenges of becoming a kinship resource and caring for children who have experienced trauma. This video highlights one mother's perspective on making the decision to become a kinship parent and the rewards brought by providing care for her kinship daughters.

Highlights one foster and adoptive mother's experience becoming a kinship caregiver for her own grandson and the impact of agency support. In this video, she discusses the fears and questions she faced in taking on this dual role of mother and grandmother and how a foster care specialist supported them during the transition.

Addresses motivations for becoming a kinship parent and the importance of having agency guidance and support to navigate shifting family roles and dynamics. This video presents one family's transition from kinship care to adoption, and highlights resources that contributed to their success and their ability to provide permanency for their adoptive daughter.

Illustrates the changes parents face when they decide to provide full-time care for their relative children and the benefits of different types of agency support. In this video, a kinship and adoptive parent discusses strategies she used to successfully provide stability for the children in her growing family and the importance of having agency resources to accommodate changing family needs.

Emphasizes the importance of community and caseworker support in having the resources needed to promote family well-being, particularly when caring for children with special needs. This video highlights the perspective of a kinship caregiver who is an Athabaskan native teaching her grandchildren the Navajo culture and community traditions and passing down her grandparents' stories.

In this video, a kinship parent caring for her niece’s children reflects on her family’s strategies for raising children who have experienced trauma and the resources that enabled them to become effective kinship caregivers.

Demonstrates the benefits and challenges of serving as a kinship/foster parent and supporting and collaborating with children's biological parents. This video highlights one caregiver's decision to foster and adopt her son and become a kinship caregiver to his younger sibling. She discusses how she maintained a close, supportive relationship with their biological mother and how they ultimately created a united, blended family.

Demonstrates the life adjustments and rewards of becoming a kinship caregiver. In this video, a caregiver shares his story of what motivated him to become a kinship parent. He discusses how caring for his sister's children and a child with special needs, as well as managing a household, have changed his life and what encourages him to continue.

Addresses the challenges that some caregivers face in their dual roles as grandparents and kinship parents and the value of support networks. In this video, a paternal grandparent discusses how she and her husband provide security and stability for their family by focusing on their grandchildren's emotional and educational needs with valuable agency support and maternal family involvement.

Demonstrates the dedication and flexibility needed when providing kinship care in order to navigate visitation schedules, foster care certification processes, and permanency proceedings. In this video, kinship parents discuss coming from an empty nest and readjusting to the parenting role, the valuable assistance they received in the process of becoming certified foster parents, and the necessity of respite provided by family and friends.

Emphasizes the necessity of strong community supports to create a secure and stable environment for a new kinship family. In this video, a grandparent discusses moving across the country to ensure her grandchildren could see their parents. She also discusses the resources and support networks that helped her become an effective kinship parent and that helped her granddaughters thrive, including their faith community, the children's former foster parents, and other community members.

Highlights the rewards and challenges of providing permanency and stability for relative children with differing needs. In this video, a single grandparent of five discusses her experience becoming a kinship caregiver, foster parent, and then legal guardian for her daughter's children, support the caseworker provided for her to become a certified foster parent, and the joy of watching her grandchildren thrive.