ScholarWorks > Institutes & Centers > Grandparents Raising Grandchildren > GrandFamilies > Vol. 8 > Iss. 1 (2025)
Abstract
Strategic partnerships and collaborations enable organizations that serve grandfamilies to address service gaps and facilitate the development or enhancement of services tailored to support their needs. These collaborative partnerships empower organizations to provide comprehensive support to caregivers and children and also play a crucial role in enabling organizations to create, expand, and maintain supportive services. By fostering strong relationships with a diverse range of partners, organizations can ensure that grandparents and other relative caregiver families receive information, assistance, and support. The authors, representing a national organization and a private foundation, have collaborated for more than 25 years to support grandfamilies. The partnership filled a significant gap in services for relative caregiver families. While child welfare leaders, such as the Child Welfare League of America, had been leading efforts to better understand and support kinship families involved with the child welfare system, no national effort was in place to support grandparents and other relatives raising children who were not in foster care. This partnership has successfully raised awareness about the existence and vital role of grandfamilies, increased access to quality supportive services for these families, impacted the development of supportive public policies, and facilitated the convening and coordination of leaders and practitioners to serve this special population of caregivers collaboratively. This article outlines some of the achievements of this partnership over the last decade, which has led to an extensive array of resources and support for this unique group of caregivers.
Recommended Citation
Beltran, A.,
Lent, J.,
Perez-Porter, M.
(2025). Generations United & The Brookdale Foundation Group: An overview of progress in support of grandfamilies over the last decade. GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy, 8 (1).
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/grandfamilies/vol8/iss1/10
