Episode 17: Ms. Genia, Keith Lowhorne, and Ana Beltran on Kinship vs. Guardianship

03/16/21 • 30 min

Across the U.S., more than 2.7 million children are growing up in grandfamilies — families in which grandparents, other adult family members, or close family friends are raising children.
Generations United, with support from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, created a brief and national comparison chart, Adoption and Guardianship for Children in Kinship Foster Care, which focuses on adoption and guardianship for children in kinship foster care, so that these children can exit foster care into permanent families.
In this episode, Ana Beltran, co-director of the National Center on Grandfamilies, is joined by Generations United's GRAND Voice Network Members Ms. Genia LaRese Newkirk and Mr. Keith Lowhorne .
Ms. Newkirk took guardianship of her niece, Nadia, after becoming licensed as a foster parent. Ms. Newkirk had never met Nadia before and didn’t know about her. They were not offered North Carolina’s Guardianship Assistance Program because the state limits their program to children age 14 and older, and Nadia is about 8 years old.
Mr. Lowhorne, with his wife, adopted three grandchildren from foster care in Alabama: Kayren, about age 7; Kaiser, about age 6; and Harper about age 4.
Ms. Newkirk and Mr. Lowhorne talk about the options offered and not offered to them when they decided to keep the children in their lives out of the foster care system.
Ana offers resources for families in this situation.
Show resources

Adoption and Guardianship for Children in Kinship Foster Care: https://www.gu.org/resources/adoption-and-guardianship-for-children-in-kinship-foster-care/
Generations United: www.gu.org
The National Center on Grandfamilies: www.grandfamilies.org

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Adoption and Guardianship for Children in Kinship Foster Care: https://www.gu.org/resources/adoption-and-guardianship-for-children-in-kinship-foster-care/
Generations United: www.gu.org
The National Center on Grandfamilies: www.grandfamilies.org

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undefined - Episode 16: Dr. Anita Rogers on How the Intergenerational Field Can Be More Inclusive and Effective in Engaging and Elevating Voices and Initiatives of People of Color

Episode 16: Dr. Anita Rogers on How the Intergenerational Field Can Be More Inclusive and Effective in Engaging and Elevating Voices and Initiatives of People of Color

Dr. Anita Rogers has been involved with the delivery of education, civil rights, human services, reentry programming, violence prevention, victim assistance and mental health in various capacities. As a development consultant, she has raised millions of dollars to help nonprofit and government agencies provide services to underserved populations, especially people of color. She now serves as a senior fellow at Generations United
Dr. Rogers joined Generations United's Executive Director Donna Butts for a discussion on civil rights work, how the activist landscape has changed, and the similarities between Black Power and Black Lives Matter.
Resources mentioned in the show:

The Official Campaign of the CROWN Act
https://www.thecrownact.com
The CROWN Act stands for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” created in 2019 to ensure protection against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and protective styles such as braids, locs, twists, and knots in the workplace and public schools.
Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH): https://asalh.org
Toolkit for those working with African American grandfamilies: http://bit.ly/AfricanAmericanGrandfamilies
Toolkit for those working with Native American grandfamilies: http://bit.ly/NativeGrands
Generations United: https://gu.org

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Episode 18: Larry Nisenson on Multigenerational Living and Employee Caregiving

A new study from Generations United, Family Matters: Multigenerational Living Is on the Rise and Here to Stay, finds that the number of Americans living in a multigenerational household with three or more generations has nearly quadrupled over the past decade, with a dramatic increase of 271 percent from 2011 to 2021 (7 percent vs. 26 percent). Our report found that 66 percent of those living in a multigenerational household say the economic climate was a factor in their living arrangement. Among the top reported causes, 34 percent said the need for eldercare was a reason and 34% said childcare was a reason.
In this episode—Larry Nisenson, senior vice president and chief commercial officer of Genworth's U.S. Life Insurance Division—joins Generations United's Executive Director Donna Butts to discuss his own role as a caregiver to his parents, ways employee caregivers can advocate for resources, and how employers can support employee caregivers.
"The best we can do as the advocates for caregivers is try and tell that story and arm the emerging caregiver with all of the tools and help we can provide for them to make that burden as easy as we can." —Larry Nisenson
Resources mentioned in the show:
• Family Matters: Multigenerational Living Is on the Rise and Here to Stay
• GenWorth sites for advocacy: GenWorth.com and CareScout.com

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