The 2022 National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers provides a roadmap for organizations and agencies to better support kin/grandfamily caregivers and the children they raise.
Kin caregivers, also called grandfamily caregivers, are grandparents, other relatives, or close family friends raising children as a result of parental death, substance use, military deployment, incarceration, or other issues. The families they form are interchangeably known as kinship families, grandfamilies, and kinship/grandfamilies.
While many of these caregivers do not see themselves in the names “kinship” or “grandfamilies,” they are doing the important job of raising children when parents cannot. We all likely know such a family because these parental issues touch every socioeconomic level, race, ethnicity, and geographic area in the country. At least 2.4 million children are being raised in these families across the United States.