Engaging Kinship Caregivers With Joseph Crumbley

As the num­ber of kin­ship care­givers increas­es for chil­dren in fos­ter care and more child wel­fare juris­dic­tions adopt a ​“kin first” place­ment prac­tice, the need to pro­vide spe­cial­ized sup­port for rel­a­tives is becom­ing even more cru­cial. These rel­a­tives are doing what fam­i­lies have always done — car­ing for their own. How­ev­er, with the added com­plex­i­ty of child wel­fare sys­tem involve­ment, finan­cial stress and multi­gen­er­a­tional loy­al­ty binds, these fam­i­lies deserve assis­tance from pro­fes­sion­als trained to meet their unique needs.

To sup­port sys­tems and case­work­ers in this work, the Foun­da­tion devel­oped a five-part video train­ing series: ​“Engag­ing Kin­ship Care­givers: Man­ag­ing Risk Fac­tors in Kin­ship Care.” Led by Joseph Crum­b­ley, the train­ing ses­sions strength­en the skills of child wel­fare pro­fes­sion­als in sup­port­ing fam­i­lies to improve out­comes for chil­dren. The series includes a dis­cus­sion guide to help pro­gram direc­tors, super­vi­sors and train­ers lead group ses­sions to deep­en the learn­ing experience.

Down­load the dis­cus­sion guide

Intro­duc­tion

The Foun­da­tion’s Tracey Feild offers an intro­duc­tion to ​“Engag­ing Kin­ship Caregivers.”

Mod­ule One: Guilt

This mod­ule explores how to man­age the under­stand­able feel­ings of guilt that rel­a­tive care­givers may expe­ri­ence as a result of chang­ing fam­i­ly dynamics.

Mod­ule Two: Loss and Ambivalence

This mod­ule explores how kin­ship care cre­ates inter­rup­tions of the caregiver’s plans, pri­or­i­ties, space and pri­va­cy and how these can con­tribute to feel­ings of loss and ambiva­lence for the rel­a­tive caregiver.

Mod­ule Three: Pro­jec­tion and Transference

This mod­ule explores pro­jec­tion and trans­fer­ence, which are psy­cho­log­i­cal terms about uncon­scious process­es where we redi­rect our emo­tions from one per­son to another.

Mod­ule Four: Hope, Fan­ta­sy and Denial

This mod­ule explores how one person’s hope can be anoth­er person’s denial. Under­stand­ing how impor­tant hope is for fam­i­ly mem­bers is crit­i­cal to empa­thet­i­cal­ly work­ing with them to main­tain these hopes and to make oth­er plans.

Mod­ule Five: Loy­al­ty Issues

This mod­ule explores a uni­ver­sal truth: Loy­al­ty runs deep in fam­i­lies. Shared blood, his­to­ry, mem­o­ries and inter­de­pen­dence hold us togeth­er as families.