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Kentucky Kinship Resource Center · Talking FACS

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  Welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  This nationally recognized, award-winning podcast is hosted by the University
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  of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program.
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  Our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families,
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  and communities to improve quality of life.
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  Hello, and welcome to Talking FACS, what you need to know about family,
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  food, finance, and fitness.
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  I'm your host, Mindy McCulley, Extension Specialist for Instructional Support
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  with Family and Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky.
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  We are housed in the Martin Gatton College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment.
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  Across the nation, nearly 2.7 million young people are being raised by a relative.
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  It is estimated that Kentucky has one of the highest rates of kinship care in the country.
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  Today, I am pleased to be joined by my special guest, Sheila Rentfrow,
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  the Kinship Program Coordinator in the UK College of Social Work. Welcome, Sheila.
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  Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Well,
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  I know that this is such an important topic because we do have so many children
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  who are being raised by maybe a grandparent or an aunt and uncle, some other relative.
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  Let's just talk about what is kinship care and why is it so important to have
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  resources offered for kinship families?
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  Well, yes, you're absolutely right. It is such an important topic,
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  especially here in the state of Kentucky, as we do have such a large kinship population.
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  Kinship care refers to a family member or even a close personal friend raising
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  a child that, for whatever reason, cannot reside with their natural parents.
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  That does often look like what we see traditionally, grandparents raising grandchildren.
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  Aunts and uncles raising nieces and nephews, cousins, even siblings raising siblings.
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  But it can also include something called fictive kin.
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  And fictive kin are those persons who are taking care of kids who they're not related to.
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  So that can even look like a babysitter or a coach or a teacher at school or
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  even a neighbor who has a strong relationship with a child, who cares and loves
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  that child and wants to provide a home for them.
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  Sheila, why is it so important to have resources for kinship care families?
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  Because, you know, raising kids, whether you're a parent or a grandparent,
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  is especially hard. It's expensive today.
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  And as many resources as we can find to help those families is essential.
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  It's essential in helping those children to be able to thrive, to be successful.
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  Research shows that kids who are able to go to a relative or a victim kin provider have
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  a greater chance of being successful in life, you know, because they're able
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  to stay connected with their family, with people that they know, with their culture,
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  with their community, even in a lot of cases with their own schools and their own friends.
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  And so all of those components come together to make that child more successful in life.
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  You know, as they grow older and as they, you know, become adults and make their
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  own families, they are able to be a bit more successful.
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  So resources become essential and support becomes essential for those caregivers
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  so that they can have the resources that they need to fully support their families,
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  to fully support the kids and be able to provide,
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  you know, the basics of raising a child, clothes, shoes, food, things like that.
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  But also just to have some support because the kinship world can be very confusing.
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  It can be very hard to navigate understanding things like court and custody.
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  And, you know, if you're working with child protection services,
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  understanding that process can be very intimidating and very frightening.
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  And so having someone or a place that you can go to, to get connected to people
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  who understand that process and who have access to those resources becomes very essential.
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  I know that the Kentucky Kinship Resource Center has three main programs that
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  you all focus your work through.
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  So tell me a little bit about those. Sure. So the Kentucky Kinship Resource
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  Center started in 2010, and it was designed to provide these kind of resources
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  and support to kinship families across the state of Kentucky.
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  And in so doing that, we started these three programs as a way of being able
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  to reach family at the level of service and support that they need for the current
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  situation that they're in.
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  So we have our KY Kins program, which stands for Kinship Information Navigation and Support.
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  And that involves a one-on-one peer mentoring program where kinship caregivers
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  can connect with certified,
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  trained peer support specialists in our program who are also kinship caregivers
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  and have been doing it for many years.
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  So they're able to connect. They're able to get access to resources because
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  they'll be talking with someone who knows where all those resources are and
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  has been trained to know where those services are.
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  And then also to get that support that they need, you know, an encouragement
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  from someone who's also living this same journey day in and day out.
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  We also have our Kin-VIP program, which stands for Virtual Interaction Program,
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  and it is a program where we offer virtually-based support groups.
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  So we have several support groups that are for kinship caregivers that brings
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  people together across the state to be able to talk about these very same things.
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  Where are the resources?
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  What kind of support is out there? And then just to have a community that kinship
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  caregivers can be a part of where they can get that encouragement and that motivation
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  and that support from like-minded people.
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  So our groups are for kinship caregivers.
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  They're facilitated by people who aren't doing kinship care and deeply involved in the kinship world.
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  So they're still getting that same lived experience, that same knowledge.
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  I love that you offer these services virtually because, you know,
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  you might not have a wide network of people in your community,
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  but as you reach out across the state, you've got lots and lots of experience to listen to.
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  That's fabulous. Tell us about the third program.
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  Sure. So our third program is the Kinship Catalog, and it is an online resource
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  pages where you can go, you can access things like live webinars.
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  We do a monthly live webinar on a topic important to kinship care,
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  and that gives us a chance to bring kinship caregivers and professionals in
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  the community and the state together to better understand a certain area.
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  We also record those as much as we're able to so that we have an ever-expanding
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  library of these webinars on all these different topics that anyone could access at any time.
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  And then the last component of our catalog is our training modules,
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  and these are just super fun. at least I think they're super fun,
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  very short 10 to 15 minute interactive educational modules that are self-paced.
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  People can access those at any time, day or night, and they can just kind of
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  work through to learn concepts, to learn new information.
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  One of the unique things about kinship care and the nature of how it works is
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  that a lot of times caregivers are taking on kids in a moment's notice because
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  something has happened and they often do it with little information.
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  So through the catalog, we are able through the live webinars,
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  through the on-demand library and through our training module library,
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  we're able to put out information that can help caregivers just learn more,
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  learn more about the kids they're taking care of, learn more about,
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  you know, things that are impacting their family so that they can feel more
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  confident, they can feel better able to be able to parent kids.
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  Because let's face it, it's different now than it was 30 years ago when grandparents
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  were raising their own kids.
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  You know, there's a lot more things, a lot more technology, a lot more issues
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  that caregivers have to be aware of and be astute to.
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  And so through the catalog, we're able to speak to a lot of those types of brief
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  I really love that because I know that kids don't come with instruction manuals,
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  but you sort of have provided the instruction manual,
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  at least the instructional resources to help kinship providers give the best
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  care that they possibly can.
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  So, how have you seen that the Kentucky Kinship Resource Center has impacted Kentucky families?
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  Oh, my goodness. So, we've been running each of these programs have launched
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  at different times. but our first one, which was our peer support program, it launched in 2021.
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  And I was just looking the other day, we've had over 500 referrals of families to the program.
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  We've worked with, I want to say around 250 families, you know,
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  that we've actually been able to work with and in these virtual one-on-one sessions.
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  And, you know, whether we work with them for just a few weeks or,
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  you know, we still have some folks that we've been working with for several,
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  several months, you know, who just need that ongoing support a little bit,
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  we've been able to really help connect families to resources that otherwise
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  they might not have known about.
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  And so that's been impactful, you know, to get some of the, of course,
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  we do surveys and evaluations and to get some of those responses back from people
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  about how instrumental it's been just to be able to get,
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  you know, to find a place where they can get diapers or find a place where they
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  can get child care and it not,
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  you know, break the bank, you know, has been so helpful to them.
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  With our Ken VIP, our support group program, you know, a lot of the folks that
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  we work with in that program are able to just to know that there are other people
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  like them because the common thing that we hear in kinship care is,
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  I feel like I'm so alone and I don't even know who to talk to because my neighbor
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  may not know anything about this or, you know, my church family may not know
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  what it is, but they don't have any experience with it.
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  So with Kin-VIP, we're able to bring people together.
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  The beauty of that is we can bring people together from one end of the state
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  to the other in one group meeting. And that just...
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  Expands their support, it expands their access to resources,
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  and just gives them a place where they feel understood and supported.
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  And they can still get all that access to information that is so important for them.
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  And then, of course, with our live webinars, being able to connect people with
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  experts, professionals in the field that they might not otherwise have access to is a huge thing.
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  We want to make sure we're giving them good information, that we're giving them accurate information.
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  And we're also being able to just kind of facilitate this community partnership
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  we have with kinship care and with professionals in a whole lot of different
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  arenas that is important to kinship care.
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  And we're increasing that awareness of the needs out there for kinship families.
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  I think that's amazing. Knowing some people in our community who are experiencing
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  this special kind of parenting, I think that I have seen the benefits there as well.
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  So what do you enjoy most about being the coordinator of the Kentucky Kinship Resource Center?
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  I think that, you know, I have a long career in foster care and I've certainly
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  worked with a lot of foster parents.
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  And I've I've been able to see a lot of wonderful things that happen in,
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  you know, when when foster parents take on kids that, you know,
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  that otherwise may not have a home to go to.
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  But what is so especially rewarding about working with kinship families is the
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  idea that we're keeping families together.
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  And, you know, having such a long history in foster care and understanding how that works,
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  it's to be able to keep kids within the family unit so that they don't have
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  that movement and they don't have that experience of trying to adjust to new
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  communities and new families.
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  We have we we're able to keep them with
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  people that they know people that they love people that
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  support them and love them and we're able to
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  connect them to these resources that can
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  keep them together you can't always say that
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  every single family does well and thrives but at the same time for a lot of
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  these grandparents who are raising grandchildren on just their social security
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  income or just their retirement income if we can help them find clothing facilities
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  and places where they can get childcare and things like that,
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  that's monumental to keep these families together so that money doesn't become a huge stressor.
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  It already is a big stressor, but at least we can provide some support.
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  So I think for me, being able to know that what we're doing is keeping family
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  units together and that we're connecting kinship caregivers to each other so that they don't feel.
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  So alone and they don't feel like they've got to figure this whole thing out by themselves.
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  That's what we're here for is to help be a supporter, be a guide,
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  be an advocate, be a resource.
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  And that's amazing. That is absolutely amazing.
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  So I know that our listeners can access more information through links that
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  I'm going to put in the show notes that you have provided with information that
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  will, of course, support their kinship journey.
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  Yes. Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today.
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  Well, thank you for having me and thank you for being willing to,
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  you know, let us talk a little bit about kinship and a little bit about what
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  we're trying to do and how we're trying to help families.
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