Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network

The Grandfamilies and Kinship Support Network is a national technical-assistance center and information hub focused on kinship care — situations where relatives raise children outside the traditional parent-child arrangement. Developed with partners including Generations United, the American Bar Association, and Casey Family Programs, it serves as a central, authoritative resource for the policies, laws, and supports that affect grandfamilies.

The center’s offerings are especially strong on the legal and policy side, where kinship caregivers often have the most questions. It provides a searchable database of state and federal laws affecting kinship families, a compilation of national and state resources supporting grandfamilies, and topic-specific libraries covering adoption, guardianship, financial assistance, healthcare, and foster-care licensing, along with research, publications, and policy guidance. Its overarching aim is to advance “kin-first” approaches in child welfare — systems that prioritize keeping children with relatives and providing those families with financial, legal, and social support.

This resource matters because while local programs deliver day-to-day help, kinship caregivers also need reliable, big-picture information about their rights and the assistance available to them — information that can be hard to find and varies by state. The network fills that role for caregivers, child-welfare agencies, attorneys, judges, and the organizations that serve grandfamilies. For Michigan caregivers, it is a valuable complement to local programs: a place to understand the broader landscape of laws and supports and to find resources specific to their state. The center is freely accessible at grandfamilies.org.