Kinship Center
The Rose House Kinship Association Center is the only center in San Diego County providing support and services to kinship families (relatives raising a family member’s child, full-time). The Rose House provides support to relatives raising children under what are often difficult circumstances. Raising another family member’s child is often overwhelming, stressful and complicated. Kinship services are critical to keeping children with family, rather than adding them to the growing number in the foster care system. The Rose House provides kinship families with legal services, support groups, trainings, case management, childcare, recreational activities, counseling and health and fitness programs. The overall goal of the Rose House is to provide children who are unable to live with their parents, and the family members who raise them, with high quality support and services, enhancing the overall stability and health of our kinship families.According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 4.5 million children are raised by more than 2 million grandparents, and other relatives are raising an additional 1.5 million children. The phenomenon of relative caregiving transcends all socioeconomic groups, geographic areas and ethnicities. The experience of grandparents and other relatives raising children is nothing new. However, over the last 25 years, the number of children raised by someone other than a parent has drastically increased. In California, there are 953,000 children living in relative care. In San Diego County, 21,244 grandparents are raising a grandchild full-time. (Note this number does not include the other relatives aunts, uncles, siblings who are raising a family member.)1
There are many benefits to kinship care over foster care. It is a strategy for family preservation and enables children to live with people they know and trust. It supports the transmission of children’s family identity. It enables children to continue family relationships focusing on strengths in family system rather than deficits. It lessens the trauma of family separation and offers growth and development within the context of a child’s culture and community. Research consistently shows that children raised by kin are more able to achieve the sense of security and belonging all children need to mature into healthy productive adults.2 Compared to their peers in the foster system they tend to experience less depression and perform better academically.
The Rose House Kinship Association is unique in that it serves a population often neglected and overlooked by traditional social service programs. The focus of most child welfare service agencies is children in the dependency/foster system. However, it is widely recognized that the vast majority of children living in relative care do not have a connection to Child Welfare Services or the dependency system, and unfortunately, these “informal” families are eligible for only a fraction of the services offered to foster parents. The Rose House is committed to providing high quality services to all kinship families.
1 Child Welfare League of America
2 Johnson-Hedgepeth; http://www.kinshipconsults.net/index.html