Do you know what one of the fastest-growing populations is in the United States today? “Grandfamilies.” Grandfamilies, also known as kinship families are created when a biological parent cannot care for their child due to untreated trauma and mental health problems that result in drug addiction, incarceration, and death. We have an entire generation of parents who are missing in their children’s lives. Grandfamilies.org reports that there are approximately 2.8 million grandfamilies in the U.S., and that number is rapidly growing.
We have another invisible crisis on our hands. Grandfamilies were struggling before the pandemic to cope with raising young children while facing their health conditions, poverty, grief, and trauma, but now they are at risk for Covid-19. With young children returning to school this fall, the potential loss of life is terrifying for the children being raised by grandparents. The hard truth is these children will have nowhere to go, except into an already overloaded and failing foster care system if their grandparents are unable to care for them.
We must care for our aging population and the children impacted by trauma they care for daily. To learn more, please listen to my recent TV interview HERE. In this interview, we discuss grandfamilies and how we can help children through this challenging situation.
To learn more about childhood trauma and the skills that will help children cope with loss and trauma, join my Facebook group, Emotiminds.