We at the Redlich Horwitz Foundation are wishing you and your staff a happy and healthy holiday season and a joyful New Year! As we begin 2021, we wanted to share new kinship resources to support your jurisdiction’s kin-first efforts.
We are kicking off January with Creative Supports for Kinship Placements:Including Flex Funds into Your Kinship Firewall Policy, a new tip sheet with ideas for integrating the use of flexible funds into local jurisdictions’ kin-first firewall practice.
Below, you will also find a series of resources and samples forms from the State’s Kinship Champion Curriculum to reinforce your efforts in alignment with the State’s new Kin-First Firewall policy (20-OCFS-ADM-18). We hope these are helpful, and we look forward to continuing to share new tools with you.
Creative Supports for Kinship Placements: Including Flex Funds in Your Kinship Firewall Policy
This new issue brief describes options local jurisdictions have for integrating the use of flexible funds into a kin-first firewall policy. Flexible funds help agencies meet the immediate needs of new kinship caregivers. The brief provides a proposed process, helpful tips and examples of the flex-funds approaches of several jurisdictions.
You can download this resource here: https://bit.ly/38Egus3.
Kinship Champion Curriculum Tools and Resources
RHF is pleased to share new tools and resources that were developed in partnership with the Office of Children and Family Services, the ABA Center on Children and the Law and Welfare Research, Inc. for the new Kinship Champion Curriculum. In response to requests from local jurisdictions, we provide the following to bolster county endeavors:
Kinship Champion Curriculum: What is a Kinship Champion? This document, part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, describes the role of the Kinship Champion in helping families make informed choices about kin caregiving. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Grandfamilies: Strengths and Challenges This document, created by Generations United and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, discusses strengths of grandparent caregivers and the challenges they face. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Icebreaker Meeting Overview This document, created by Annie E. Casey Foundation and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, describes the purpose of an "icebreaker meeting,"— a facilitated conversation between parents and resource parents about a child's needs. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Creating Culture Change This document, created as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, describes steps that kinship champions can take to create culture change through their efforts. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Working with Kin Caregivers — Unique Considerations This document, created by Annie E. Casey Foundation and based on the work of Dr. Joseph Crumbley, is used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum. It describes the unique emotional and relational considerations for family members who are becoming kin caregivers. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Family Find and Engagement This document, created by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, describes the process of Family Find and Engagement. Family Find and Engagement is a process aimed at re-establishing family connections between children in out-of-home care and their relatives. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Piecing Together the Puzzle: Tips and Techniques for Effective Discovery in Family Finding This article, created by Child Trends and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, provides tips and methods for finding and engaging family members in planning for a relative child in foster care. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: More About Family Finding This document, created as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, provides an overview of the Family Finding model and its essential components. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Bringing Family to the Table: Tips and Techniques for Effective Family Engagement This article, created by Child Trends and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, provides tips and methods for engaging family members and fictive kin in planning for a child in foster care. The article explores each step of the engagement process and best practices for each. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Relative/Suitable Other Safety Assessment This sample form, created by Onondaga County and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, presents an example of a safety assessment that can be used for relatives and other suitable persons. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Family Resource Form This sample form, created by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and used as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, provides an example of how information about family resources can be collected. View PDF
Kinship Champion Curriculum: Kinship Resources This resource list, created as part of the State's Kinship Champion Curriculum, provides both national and state resources to support kinship. View PDF
Thank you for reading! If you have any suggestions for how to make this newsletter more responsive to your needs, please email Jessie Rothkuo directly at jrothkuo@rhfdn.org. And please visit www.FamilyFirstNY.org to learn more about our ongoing support of Family First implementation statewide, which includes our Tools & Resources page.