Kinship - When Family Steps In

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WHEN FAMILY STEPS IN

Recognizing Kinship Families

September is Kinship Care Month, a time to recognize the grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, extended family members, and other significant people who step in when a child needs care.

For many kinship families, stepping in happens in a moment no one planned for. A phone call. A family crisis. A question that needs an answer quickly. There may be little time to prepare for how profoundly saying yes will change their lives — only the knowledge that a child they love needs somewhere safe to land.

Here in New Brunswick, kinship is becoming an important part of how we care for children. The Government of New Brunswick identifies family and kinship as the first option for children and youth when they cannot safely remain with their parents.

Keeping a child with someone they already know can preserve connections to family, culture, community and identity.

But being with family doesn't mean there hasn't been loss. For children, being safe with someone they know does not erase the experience of leaving their parents, home, routines, or life they knew.

Family doesn't necessarily mean familiar when it comes to parenting.

Kinship care can reshape an entire family. Grandparents become parents again. Aunts and uncles become parental figures. Cousins may begin living as siblings. Older siblings may find themselves parenting younger ones. Children already in the home may suddenly be sharing their parents, bedrooms, belongings, routines and emotional space in ways they never expected.

Everyone is figuring out how to honour the relationships that existed before while building the relationships the family needs now.

KINSHIP CONNECTIONS

👥 Connect with Other Kinship Families

Join our private Facebook community for New Brunswick kinship caregivers.

→ Join the Private Facebook Group

🏠 Explore Kinship Care & Resources

Learn more about kinship care and explore resources, stories, and links we've gathered for kinship families.

→ Visit our Kinship Care page.

Family relationships, complicated feelings and holding space for both.

Unlike many other caregiving journeys, the circumstances that brought the child into the home are happening within the caregiver's own family.

And the child's parent isn't simply someone a kinship caregiver has to “navigate a relationship with.” They may be the caregiver's own son, daughter, sibling, cousin, or someone else they deeply love.

A caregiver can be protecting a child while still loving the person the child needed protection from. They may be worried about them, angry with them, advocating for them, setting boundaries with them, grieving for them, sometimes all at once.

Other family members may have feelings about what has happened or what should happen next. Caregivers may be learning new systems while supporting a child through enormous change — and managing their own emotions at the same time.

Kinship care can hold seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.

You can love the child in your home beyond measure and grieve the circumstances that brought them there.
You can hope for a parent you love to heal while being afraid of what comes next.
You can know that saying yes was the right choice and still miss the life your family had before.
You can be grateful that a child is safe and deeply angry that they ever needed to be.

None of those feelings cancel the others out.

### For children, those complicated feelings can exist too. A child doesn't stop loving their parent because a grandparent, aunt, uncle, sibling, or other loved one is now keeping them safe. They may miss their parent, worry about them, defend them, feel angry with them, want to go home, not want to go home **and** love their kinship caregiver deeply at the same time. Children may need reassurance that loving the person caring for them isn't a betrayal of their parent — and loving their parent isn't a betrayal of their caregiver.

Kinship families deserve a community around them

Kinship Care Month isn't only an opportunity to recognize and honour kinship caregivers. It's an opportunity for all of us to consider how we can support them.

Check in. Keep checking in. Support can be plentiful when a child first arrives and becomes quieter as time passes. A simple “How are things going?” can matter. Kinship care may begin with an emergency, but the impact doesn't end when things settle down.
Offer help. A meal, a drive, help with errands, or spending time with the children in the family can make space for a caregiver who is suddenly juggling a lot.
Make room for feelings. Someone can love the child in their care deeply while also grieving how their family has changed. They don't need to choose between those feelings.

Respect the child's story. A family doesn't owe us the details of why a child is living with a relative. Let caregivers and children decide what they want to share.
Include the family. Kinship changes more than one relationship. Partners, children, grandparents, and extended family members may all be finding their way through something new.
Don't assume that being family makes it easier. Knowing and loving a child before they come into your care can be an incredible strength. It can also mean that the caregiver is experiencing the same family crisis, loss, and uncertainty as the child they are trying to support.

And most importantly, listen without judgment. Kinship families don't always need someone to solve the problem. Sometimes they need someone to sit beside them while they figure out what comes next.

To our kinship families: we're glad you're here.

At NBAF, our role isn't to tell kinship families how to navigate their journey. It's to make sure they don't have to navigate it alone.

Our community includes people with lived experience of kinship care who understand how complicated, rewarding, exhausting, and unexpected this journey can be: the fierce love, the grief, the uncertainty, the conflicting feelings, and the questions that can be hard to say out loud.

Sometimes what matters most is simply being in a space where you don't have to explain why it's complicated.

When family steps in, they shouldn't have to stand alone.

NBAF also has a private Facebook support group specifically for kinship families in New Brunswick. A place to connect, ask questions, share experiences, and be around people who understand.

👪 JOIN OUR KINSHIP FAMILIES FACEBOOK GROUP

This Kinship Care Month, we honour the families who step in without a roadmap, sometimes without warning, and always into circumstances more complicated than a few words can capture.

And we invite the rest of us to do more than celebrate them. Learn about their experiences. Listen to their stories. Check in. Offer practical help. Advocate for the supports they need. Make space for complicated feelings.

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