Though a little out of my expertise, the learning experience on the broad issue of kinship care was enlightening. According to the Central Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) 45 million Americans are caring for a loved one at home without pay. If four million of those caregivers are grandparents and other relatives caring for children, we can imagine the scope of the other side of the caregiving life at over 40 million people adjusting their lives, their children’s lives, their homes, and their personal economics all out of a deep love for someone in their family. 

Kinship care is currently defined as the 24-hour home care of children and frail adults by a relative or close friend. The issues and decisions for adult care are very different than those families caring for children full time.

Both types of kinship care, however, also require much of the same struggle:

• Getting organized to enable access to important information and a chronology of the care for legal and medical concerns
• Financial adjustments that could include job loss, use of public funds and accurate accounting
• Learning quickly to seek out adequate and appropriate resources involved in the specific care issues
• Terrific emotional dynamics

Both types of kinship care also require conscientious social decisions in every sector of our culture in order to secure the health of our families and communities. This is not an altruistic consideration. The economic health of the nation is at stake. Forty-five million kinship caregivers if paid for the care they provide, which they are not, would exceed $300 billion dollars, almost as much as the entire Medicaid budget give or take a few billion. Yet the majority of these care givers have given up jobs, pay for the care of their loved ones out of pocket, and become critical business managers in their new role struggling through sticky webs of bureaucracy.

The economic potential of healthy kinship care systems is rated as one of the top ten hot careers in the first quarter of this new century. Careers include care managers, home care services, transportation, respite centers, therapy, even gadgets for home safety and comfort are a big part of this future.

Just as we face the challenges of our fast changing world, we need a consensus of commitment to all aspects of kinship care. We need much more research on which to base good long term decisions. It’s a little scary, but we also know we cannot just patch and run, we have to look at the entire issue and commit to the tasks ahead.

Contact Helene LaBrecque Ellis via email at hellis7@msn.com or by phone at 517-256-3277. For informtion on how to purchase her book, "A Kinship Guide to Rescuing Children For Grandparents and Other Relatives As Parents," email info@chicagoroadpublishing.com.