Moving Onto the Next Chapter in Life

The office started out the week less full as our interns finished their last week with us. The interns were an integral part of our organization beginning in August when they began their internship. They performed various tasks and assisted us with many projects over the course of their time with us.

In honor of the interns’ departure, we have asked one our interns, Kaycee, to share with the readers her experiences and observations while interning at the Florida Kinship Center.

–Jacqueline Warner Garman

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to write about my experiences here in Tampa and with the Florida Kinship Center. To introduce myself, I am a social work student from the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, and I have been doing an exchange with USF since August. I have enjoyed my time here, and I have learned a lot that I will be able to take back home with me.

Although the point of the international student exchange is to learn, most of my learning has happened outside of the class room. For me, one of the best parts about living in a new part of the world is that I get to meet new people and discover our differences and similarities together.

Some of things that are different are silly, like how I spell colour with a ‘u’ or that I had absolutely no idea what grits were. But, some of the differences have been more frustrating and challenging. When I first arrived in Tampa and started working at the Florida Kinship Center, I was honestly a little overwhelmed with all the differences. I felt like I knew nothing that everyone else seemed to know without having to ask, but I was starting from scratch. As someone from a different country and a different ‘system’ I felt like I was drowning in a sea of confusing acronyms and short-forms like DCF, CBC, or RCG. I didn’t know the difference between Medicaid and Medicare, or how the different legal courts work. I felt like I was in one of those school-age nightmares where you have to take a test on something that you have never studied.

I was discouraged and disappointed because I worried that I would not be able to learn ‘the system’ enough to be helpful in my role with the Florida Kinship Center. But then it dawned on me, my feelings of confusion and frustration were probably only a fraction of what the people I wanted to help, kinship caregivers, must feel when they make the decision to care for children. I have only gotten a taste of the maze that a relative caregiver must walk through in order to get the support that they need to raise their relative’s children, and I have gained a profound respect for those that make this personal sacrifice.

Although the area of kinship care is new to me, my experience at FKC has given me the opportunity to fully appreciate how it isn’t just the children who benefit from their caregivers’ sacrifices, but we all do, and because of that, caregivers deserve assistance.

So, as I prepare to leave Tampa and the FKC, I want to finish by thanking my colleagues at the FKC, and the caregivers who I have had the opportunity to meet, I know that this experience will help me become a better social worker and a better helper.

--Kaycee Haig

The Traditions That We Make

The holiday time often entails spending time with friends and family, but it is traditions that also play a vital role during the holidays within our circle of loved ones. Before you took on the responsibility of your relative’s child, perhaps you had your own traditions and ways you celebrated during the holidays. The commercials on television and on the radio are reminding us how quickly the holidays are approaching. You may be thinking about how you are going to celebrate this holiday season with the new additions in your family. Perhaps you will continue to do the same thing or perhaps you will want create new traditions. The children that came into your care may want to incorporate what they’ve done in the past with their family of origin or create new traditions all together.


During thanksgiving, it is my dad that carves the turkey and we all go around the table sharing something we are thankful for. At Christmas time, my family has made it a tradition to head to the east coast to visit St. Augustine. We enjoy time with family and the decorations that envelope the quaint old town. As our family has grown, our traditions have evolved, transformed and sometimes we've even retired some traditions because our family has changed and we've had to adapt. What kinds of traditions do you plan on incorporating into the coming holidays?

--Jacqueline Warner Garman

Fostering Connections Kinship Federal Legislation 2008

Generations United kindly broke down what the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 means for grandparents and other relatives raising children. Here is what they have to say:

The bill will promote permanent families for children by providing:

• Authorizes subsidized guardianship to enable children in the care of grandparents and other relatives to exit foster care into permanency
• Establishes Kinship navigator programs to help link relative caregivers both inside and outside of the formal child welfare system to a broad range of services and supports that will help them meet the needs of the children in their care
• Requires notice be given to adult relatives of a child if he or she is placed in foster care
• Allows states in a demonstration program the option to set separate licensing standards for relative foster parents and non-relative foster parents

The bill also supports children and families by:

• Extending direct Title IV-E funding to tribal governments
• Reauthorizing the Adoption Incentives Program, a critical tool in helping children become adopted.
• Allowing states to receive federal reimbursement for support provided to foster youth up to age 21
• Requiring reasonable efforts to keep siblings together

If you are interested in finding out more information about this bill, please visit Generations United’s website at http://www.gu.org.

Copyright (2008), Generations United. Reprinted with permission of Generations United (http://www.gu.org).

Relative Caregivers vs. Adoption

Relative Caregivers vs. Adoptive Parents

In recent years there has been an increase in the government’s partiality for kinship care. Many of us have taken on the responsibility of raising children that are not our own. Grandparents and other relatives have made decisions on what is the best route when taking on this responsibility and have stepped forward to take on an enormous responsibility.

In Florida, there has been an influx of long term relative care and placing children with relatives opposed to placing children into Foster care, reason being; it is less costly for the government to provide small cash grants and medical benefits to children being raised by relative caregivers than to take on the entire financial responsibility of keeping the child (ren) in Foster care. A national survey supports this conclusion, finding that children in kinship care deal with more hardships, receive fewer services, and come across with greater difficulty attaining the services they need than children in non-relative foster care (Ehrle and Geen, 2002).
Children living in the State of Florida and are being raised by grandparents or other relatives are eligible to receive “child-only” cash assistance which is called Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) through the Department of Children and Families. In 1998, the Florida Relative Caregiver Program was established to provide financial assistance to kinship care families. Eligibility criteria for this program includes: children are in the fulltime care of a relative within a fifth degree of relationship to the child, the child has been adjudicated dependent by the state due to child abuse, neglect or abandonment, the relative possesses a dependency court order through juvenile court, and a home study is approved by the state (Florida Department of Children and Families, 2001). In both programs, the cash assistance is less than Foster Care payments.
Currently in the State of Florida, more than 345,000 children are being raised in Kinship and of this amount; more than 258,000 are being raised by grandparents, many of which are on fixed income. (Grandfacts.org)
With the influx of those that are assuming the responsibility of raising relative children, most are not being informed of their options and are sometimes being forced into adoption and do not feel comfortable working directly with the child welfare system when having to participate in the termination of parental rights of their own children or other relative to be eligible to adopt.

When the adoption route is taken, the relative caregiver ceases to be a relative caregiver and thus becomes a parent to the child (ren) they are raising, which causes the lost of benefits that relative caregivers receive.

Even though the adoption route is taken opposed to long term relative care and you’re not sure if adopting your relative’s child is the right thing to do, especially if the relative remains in the family circle, you go forward because of what’s best for the child (ren). They need to feel the love, stability and permanency that they possibly have not received from being moved from place to place (foster homes) or possibly their parent’s home.

These children come with baggage, so be prepared to have lots and lots of patience, ask as many questions from the case manager that you can possibly think of when they come into your home and by all means, be prepared to give lots and lots of love.

...Sybil Goings

From Monologues to Dialogues

The Florida Kinship Center would like to welcome you to a new day. Because of the busy lifestyle that most of us lead, we would like to introduce you to something new and more innovative to what we’ve done in the past. That something new is called BLOGGING, to some this might be an unfamiliar concept, but some of us are possibly already familiar with blogging.

The definition of blogging is: a web log that provides commentary or news on a particular subject. A typical blog may also include descriptions of events or other material such as graphics or video (Wikipedia, 2008).

At the Florida Kinship Center, we’ve chosen to move more from a “monologue to a dialogue” with the individuals and families we serve, and it’s our hope that creating this blog will allow us the freedom to do so. Blogging will take the place of our Bi-Weekly Newsletter, but for those who loved knowing about upcoming events, we will keep you posted using the calendar embedded on this blog.