25% of Black children are living in the care of extended family members, but federal and state resources for “grandfamilies” are slim to none, a report finds.
A new report highlights the lack of federal and state support for families when children are raised by relatives in “kinship families” and “grandfamilies.”Dec. 9, 2021, 5:39 PM UTCIt had been decades since Sarah Smalls and her husband raised their only son. So Smalls, a grandmother in Virginia, was a bit rusty when she took in her three grandchildren, a 2-year-old girl and, later, the girl’s 4- and 6-year-old brothers.
Smalls’ son was incarcerated, and the children’s mother was unable to care for them, so Smalls knew she needed to step up. She gave up her dream of retiring to the Caribbean and borrowed from her 401 account to raise the children with her husband, who retired to help. “It was extremely difficult,” said Smalls, 73. “We had not planned to have grandchildren living with us. Getting up in the morning, fixing bottles, going off to work — normally I’d get into bed by 1 a.m. and would be up at 6 a.m. to do it all over. It was hard to imagine getting two more children.” The children are now 17, 18 and 21.
“I was looking for any kind of resources for grandparents raising children, and there weren’t many back then,” she said. “The quality and level of support a family can receive depends on ... a caregiver’s legal relationship with the child. So if you’re an informal caregiver who didn’t go through child protective services, there are even less resources for you.”
Smalls is one of many people across the country providing “family, friend or neighbor care” in what have been called “kinship families” or “grandfamilies,” families in which children are raised by relatives or close family friends. Some guardians adopt the children, others care for them as familial foster parents, and some refuse to go through state agencies, preferring to remain informal caregivers.
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