When Ali Caliendo was working with the state of Nevada helping families deal with trauma, she met a woman caring for four children. The woman — their great aunt — had stepped in to help when the children’s mother was killed and their father was incarcerated.
At first the caregiver didn’t ask for financial help from the state. But when she did, the state threatened to remove the kids from her care, assuming she was no longer capable of raising them.
It’s not unusual for relatives to raise children who no longer have parents who can care for them. More than 2.6 million children in the United States are being raised by what are often called grandfamilies or kinship families. A report from the nonprofit Generations United found that though American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Black people are 15 percent of the American population, they make up 33 percent of grandfamilies. That’s far higher than the rate for white children.
‘I was just blown away by how many children were living in kinship homes,” Caliendo said.
“As I was working with those kids,” she added, “I was having a lot of conversation with caregivers, and there was just so many important questions that were not being answered by any of the professionals that they were working with. So I started researching answers to their questions, and that’s when I started finding there is a whole bunch of gaps in terms of what information was available.”
In response to the need, Caliendo founded a nonprofit to help relatives raising their kin. It’s part of a network of programs called kinship navigators. Since 2018, the Social Security Act has provided about $20 million each year toward developing, operating, and evaluating such programs across the United States. Every state, Washington, D.C., and 11 Indian tribal organizations received funding for kinship programs in 2021, the latest year for which figures are available.
State child-welfare systems are often alerted when children cannot be taken care of by their parents. The state can arrange for children to live with relatives or with foster families. Generations United has advocated that living with family is best.
Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United, which has a $4 million annual budget, said the nonprofit has spent 20 years asking for more federal money to help relatives care for kids.
Then, in 2021, it received $10 million of the American Rescue Plan, the federal emergency funding plan made in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It used the money to start a national center to help nonprofits, agencies, and other groups that work with grandfamilies access assistance.
The National Technical Assistance Center on Grandfamilies and Kinship Families has gathered information from groups in every state and is now developing a plan to help those on the front lines help families navigate a complex network of organizations and agencies. Staff at the new center will answer questions from families and people representing the families.
Ana Beltran, the center’s executive director, said staff at the center talked with nonprofits and other groups in every state. They learned that families need more efficient ways to access the resources offered by nonprofit organizations and government agencies. The center has partnered with experts and five national nonprofits that will share resources among themselves, such as holding a webinar on how to work together.
Connecting With Nonprofits
The assistance center will help families find nonprofits such as Foster Kinship, a program founded and run by Caliendo in Nevada.
Caliendo said kinship navigator programs help families get legal, financial, health, and housing information, as well as other resources. The nonprofit programs can also help by sharing expertise and offering advice to similar programs in other states.
In Nevada from 2019 to 2021, 25,000 children were in kinship care, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kid Count Data Center. But some people aren’t aware of the navigator programs, Caliendo said.
Other nonprofits across the United States are working with the new assistance center, including those addressing the needs of Black and Native American families.
Karyn Jones, CEO of the nonprofit National Caucus and Center on Black Aging, said it’s not unusual for grandparents to be the sole providers for their grandchildren. But there are not enough resources to help them find their way around the child-welfare system to get what they need. Through the partnership, the center on Black Aging wants to increase awareness of its programs and make sure the voices of kinship families are heard.
“There are a lot of things out there that [Black people] just don’t take advantage of,” she said. “And it’s not because we don’t want to. It’s because we don’t feel welcome. We don’t see it or we don’t know about it or we don’t think we’re eligible for it.”
Sarah Kastelic, executive director of National Indian Child Welfare Association, works with many Native American extended families. Relatives usually step in instead of letting the children be placed in the child-welfare system.
Kastelic says in most native languages, there is not a word for “orphan” because living with extended family is a big part of the culture. Children are a shared responsibility, she said.
When children have been removed from their families, the association tries to lessen the impact of that removal. The foster-care system can do a lot of damage, Kastelic said. And the work the association does proves the best way to stabilize the situation is family support.
Generations United reports that children do better when living with family members compared to nonrelatives. They have increased stability, better behavioral and mental health, and a greater likelihood of preserving their cultural identity.
The association brings the relationships with 574 federally recognized tribes across the country to the partnership, said Kastelic, who sits on the Generations United’s Board of Directors. She said the association’s role in the partnership is helping to extend the benefits of the center to tribes.
“It’s a real opportunity for tribes to think about the variety of services that relative caregivers need and how better to coordinate those services so that when children need a placement outside of their home, their relatives can care for them,” she said.
Beltran said she has noticed the child-welfare system is working harder to place kids with relatives than it did 10 years ago. Federal and state policies now emphasize the importance of that practice.
Butts, of Generations United, said grant makers and other donors continue to offer financial support even though the center is getting federal funding.
She said it’s important to communicate that although the government responded to a need, the nonprofit and those working to directly help the families still need more financial support.
“We’re hoping that the center will be able to really leverage and compel people and philanthropists to understand that investments in these families are worthwhile,” she said.
Reporting for this article was underwritten by a Lilly Endowment grant to enhance public understanding of philanthropy. See more about the grant and our gift-acceptance policy.
