Providing women who undertake kinship care with support
Kinship care is a wonderfully kind and sacrificial offer to provide a home for someone else's child. These kids typically had parents who weren't able to care for them, which is a tough place for any kid. The role of kinship carer may leave you with feeling like you have little time to get support and to "refill your tank" but its important to not just push away feelings of struggle or negativity as these an fester rather than make you stronger.
Websites Offering Support:
Kinship “Foster” Carers
is run by Kinship Carers for Kinship Carers. They are unable to offer legal advice but can offer you knowledge, experience and friendship as well as pointing you in the right direction regarding legal matters and other avenues of support for you and the children you care for.
Grandparents Plus
through its advice service and support network, helps kinship carers by providing support, giving independent guidance and connecting them with each other. The support programmes are developed with kinship carers for kinship carers, and are changing lives by strengthening families across the country.
Books on this subject:
The Connected Child
Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, this book will help you:
- Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child
- Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders
- Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened
Inside Kinship Care
Kinship care is a major part of foster care, yet there are distinct issues that arise in care involving family rather than ‘stranger’ foster carers. This book takes an in-depth look at what goes on ‘inside’ kinship care. It explores the dynamics and relationships between family members that are involved in kinship care, including mothers, grandparents, siblings and the wider family. Chapters also discuss issues such as safeguarding, assessment, therapy, encouraging permanence, placement breakdown, support groups, and cultural issues. The final part of the book looks at kinship care from an international perspective, with examples from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the United States. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives and with contributions from different branches of kinship care, this book provides an invaluable overview of the issues involved and how to provide effective support. It will be essential reading for all those working in the kinship care field, including social workers, therapists, counsellors, psychologists and family lawyers.
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