The Caregiver Reported Value of Participation in a Kinship Support Center
In this study, the phrase "kinship care" will be used to describe the caregiving circumstances of relatives and close friends. Hong (2011) reported that in terms of formal and informal foster care, kinship "care placement has increasingly become a preferred form of childcare arrangement" (p. 863) Langosch (2012) estimated that about 2.4 million grandparents nationwide who were raising about 6 million grandchildren, representing a 50% increase from 1995 to 2005.Bissell and Miller (2012) reported that 26% of all state supervised children in the United States are cared for by kin. Kinship caregiving costs the government less money than traditional foster caregiving; Langosch (2012) reported that kinship caregivers save the government billions of dollars every year. Strom and Strom (2011) reported that in the United States, it costs states an average of $22,000 for a foster care child and only $4,000 for a kinship child's annual support.Review of the LiteratureIn an extensive review of the literature and meta analysis of the kinship caregiving research, Winokur, Holton, and Valentine (2008) clearly established the benefits of kinship caregiving homes to children, yet made it clear that kinship care should not become the only form of outof home care for children in need. Numerous challenges face kinship caregivers, children, and families when the kinship family is formed.Research has identified heavier burdens because kinship caregivers tend to be older than foster caregivers (Strozier Krisman, 2007) They tend to have higher levels of stress, anger, isolation from friends, depression, and anxiety (Strom Strom, 2011) And custodial grandmothers have more serious health problems (Bachman Chase Lansdale, 2005) Dolbin MacNab and Keiley (2009) described the adjustment to caregiving as an "off time" role that requires the caregivers to reconcile their traditional role of grandparent to their new role of full time caregiver.Circumstances for kinship caregivers may be worse than for foster caregivers because kinship care families often form unexpectedly and without long term preparation. Cuddeback (2004) reported that kinship families have fewer resources, receive less training from state agencies, receive less support, and are less qualified than foster families.In the Anne E. Casey Foundation report Stepping Up For Kids, it is mentioned that some of the factors which confound the establishment of a newly formed kinship family include the need for legal authority to act for the children, guilt and shame of the family related circumstances, and the difficulties of navigating government and community support systems (Bissell Miller, 2012).Bachman and Chase Landsdale (2005) reported a pattern of underutilization of welfare and other community resources by informal kinship caregivers. These patterns may be the result of caregivers not knowing where to go to find answers and/or how to locate and obtain available resources. This study will evaluate how well three communitybased kinship care centers located in a Western State mediated similar hardships for its kinship caregiver families.MethodologyThis survey research study was pre approved by an IRB Human Subjects Review Board at Utah Valley University. It includes the aggregated data from 101 kinship caregivers who had participated in the ten week course and other ongoing programs offered in one of three local county kinship support centers. The survey instrument contained 13 background questions used to derive demographic descriptors and 28 statements about their current kinship circumstances. The data were entered into SPSS software and analysis yielded results presented below.ResultsTable 1 shows demographic descriptions of the respondents. The median age was 58.0 years (range was 26 73 years old) and the median age of becoming a caregiver was 54.0 years (range of 24 71 years when became a caregiver)