Childhood should be a time filled with joy, exploration, and achievement. To be sure, childhood, like life, has its struggles—making the team, a failed quiz, a first crush. But for some children, their childhoods are filled with more hardship than they bargained for. Children living through abuse or neglect, or in challenging family situations, can become at risk of removal from their family. While this is done in the best interest of the child, it’s not without severe consequences.
Often, what’s best for the child is stabilizing and improving the conditions in their homes, rather than removing them from their household and family entirely. KID Inc. exists to provide support and services geared towards that outcome first and foremost. Our services are for the entire family and delivered in your home or at our Family Counseling Center. In doing so, we help ensure that children can enjoy their childhood, rather than survive it.
If there’s a risk of family separation or just a child falling through the cracks, please refer them to our KID Inc. Family Strengthening Services so we can step in and address the issues head on. In the last year, our programs have provided over 4,000 children and their families with the care and training necessary to keep children and families together. Referring children in need to our programs and services helps entire families learn and grow into loving, supportive households.
The Importance of Family Preservation
Family preservation isn’t just part of what we do at KID Inc., it’s at the very heart of it. Our mission is to prevent child abuse, preserve the family, and treat children who have been abused or neglected. We believe that strengthening families and preventing child removals provide the best outcomes for children in distress. It’s a belief borne out of research and data showing that family preservation promotes better outcomes for children. While the decision to remove a child from a negative living situation may be better for the child’s long-term physical and mental health, the event is still a source of trauma and tension.
- Children placed into foster care are more likely to have their children removed to foster care later in life, perpetuating a cycle.
- Children in foster care are also more likely to have adverse childhood experiences, which, when left untreated, can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms in later life.
- Preserving families can keep children connected to their families, culture, and roots—respecting a child’s unique heritage.
Kinship: A Strengthening Families Program
There are various family programs to assist in strengthening and stabilizing the household, from improving the skills and knowledge of parents to placing children with relatives. When children are placed with relatives, whether grandparents, aunts, uncles, or etc., these are known as kinship families. The circumstances surrounding the creation of these kinship families, as well as the complexities involved in maintaining these families, create unique challenges that require tailored solutions.
Common Challenges for Kinship Families
One of the most immediate challenges for these families often involves the legal system, especially as it relates to legal custody. Kinship families may need to pursue legal custody to access the benefits and support they need to provide fulfilling homes for the children in their care. But when a kinship family is created, the caregivers may not know what legal custody means, why it matters, or how to get it.
Another challenge can be the financial strain of raising a child. The most recent data showed it costs over $200,000 to raise a child born in 2015, a figure that is likely an underestimate of current requirements. For kinship families, whether the child placed in their care is their first, or an additional child in the household, it can add unexpected costs to the family budget.
Kinship families may also struggle with unique emotional challenges for themselves and the child in their care. Caregivers may feel guilty for taking in a relative’s child, or ashamed of their relative for creating the situation in the first place. Left unrecognized and unattended to, these feelings can become a heavy burden on the entire family.
How KID’s Kinship Program Strengthens Families
KID Inc.’s Kinship Support Services provide kinship families throughout Broward County with personal attention to help them navigate and overcome these challenges. Our skilled staff helps kinship caregivers understand complex legal topics like custody rights and how they impact their ability to access public benefits and medical services.
They can also connect them with services they can access as kinship caregivers, including our KID Inc. Family Counseling Center. Here, kinship caregivers and children can receive individual or family counseling to cope with the changes the new family arrangement has created.
Family Programs for Early Childhood Support
When government agencies do remove children from their families and households, it’s often because services were delivered too late, rather than not at all. Services that should be the first foot in the door end up becoming the ones forced to make the difficult decision to have the child removed from the house. Rather than waiting for problems to bubble up to the surface, we can step in ahead of time to prevent problems from occurring at all.
KID Healthy Start: A Family Program for Preparation
One family program that aims to achieve this goal is our KID Healthy Start program. Through Healthy Start, pregnant mothers and women with children up to 3 years old can receive resources, education, and support through in-home visits. The goal of the program is to help women provide the best care possible for their children from pregnancy through infancy and early childhood.
In Healthy Start visits, women learn how to plan for the upcoming birth, how to reduce the risk of infant mortality and disease, and manage stress. Mothers in the Healthy Start program can also learn how to plan and take more control over their reproductive health and outcomes.
Healthy Families Can Prevent Problems
It isn’t always possible to provide Healthy Start services to at-risk families and households, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still opportunities for training and education. In the KID Healthy Families program, households receive training on positive parenting strategies that promote a healthy, abuse-free childhood.
Like Healthy Start, Healthy Families occur through home-based visitations that provide family strengthening activities. They also tie the family into community care networks, creating a source of long-term support. As a result of participation, parents better understand their stressors and how to manage them to avoid perpetuating abusive behavior.
How to Access Services
Households looking for family strengthening programs in Fort Lauderdale don’t need to look any further. Whether you know the exact KID program you wish to enroll in or aren’t sure what, if anything, your family needs, we can help. If you, your child, or a child in your life needs the KID FIRST or Kinship programs, you can go to the Family Strengthening Programs Page to fill out the online referral forms.
Families looking for the KID Healthy Start and Healthy Families programs can call us at (954) 390-7654. For Healthy Start, the extension is 1131, and for Healthy Familie,s the extension is 1281. You can also call the above number for more information about our programs, including our Family Counseling Center and the services we provide there.
KID Inc.: Where Every Family Deserves Support
Reaching out to a strengthening families program regarding a child in your or a loved one’s care might feel shameful and full of pain. But it’s the right call. There’s an understandable apprehension borne out of a fear of being judged by the very people sent to help. That’s not the experience you’ll have with KID. Our staff and leadership remain committed to our mission and core values, chief among these being our commitment to keeping families united. We believe all families deserve support because we believe all can provide the loving, supportive environments children need. Call today for the help you need.