Supporting Indigenous Kinship Caregivers

Wisdom from the Elders: kinship care that honors traditional Indigenous ways

“…For example, the Elders shared ideas about helping parents learn some of the skills such as parenting and setting healthy boundaries that were lost due to intergenerational trauma and of doing so in a manner that is consistent with traditional practices. The idea of supporting Indigenous individuals in their healing as a way to improve kinship care systems is consistent with recent research with Indigenous kinship caregivers which found that one of their primary needs is for support to heal from the impacts of colonialism (Burke, Bouey, Madsen, Costello & Schmidt, 2023).…”

“…Finally, it is important to note that some of the ideas shared by the Elders are repeatedly echoed in the national and international literature on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous care. For example, one Elder described the need for kinship caregivers to receive appropriate supports and for those supports to be equal to those received by foster parents, something kinship caregivers and their advocates have long been saying (Burke, Bouey, Madsen, Costello, Schmidt, Barkaskas, et al, 2023; Murray et al, 2004; Sullivan et al, 2015). This finding suggests that organizations, policy-makers, and practitioners who work in kinship care should maintain an awareness of the research that has already been conducted with those impacted by kinship care processes and that they work to create systems that honor those ideas.…”