Attendees: Ben Nichols (Saratoga County Office for the Aging), Mary Rickard (Office for the Aging), Sharon Emerson (St. Peter's CHOICES), Karin Drosdick (Mechanicville Community Center), Patrick Harrington (Office for the Aging), Darryl Gray (Interim Healthcare), Chris Camburn (Family Self-Sufficiency Program), Susanne Bernard (Family Self-Sufficiency Program), Ardis Armer (Office for the Aging ), Emma Schmitt (Office for the Aging), Tena Bunnell (Home Helpers), Whitney Jobmann (SAIL), Gillian Verdu (Saratoga Senior Center), Eric Weber (Saratoga County DSS), Maria Geizer (Home Instead Senior Care).
Introductions and Announcements and reminders - The next meetings and topics are as follows:
May 9th - at Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church. The presenter will be Laura Marx from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the topic will be Talk Saves Lives.
June 13th - at St Edward’s Church in Clifton Park. The presenter will be Adam Strom from PreNeed Trust Services. The topic will be Preplanning a Funeral: Things to Consider.
July 11th - at Malta Community Center. The presenter will be Amanda Duff from Saratoga County Public Health. She is the Public Health Educator and will be presenting on the different areas in which Public Health is working, provide updates and invitations to participate in the numerous coalitions they have across the county as well as upcoming events, offer workshop opportunities and ask for feedback on programs/topics that attendees see a need for so that we can collaborate to address them.
August -no meeting.
Today's Topic and Presenter: Gerard Wallace, Program Director- NYC Kinship Navigator Program, presenting "Kinship Services in New York State."
What is Kinship Care?
It is when non-parents (grandparents, blood relatives and non-relatives known as "fictive kin") provide full time care and control of children in their homes.
Children end up in kinship care for a variety of reasons -
-abuse, neglect, abandonment
-parental substance abuse or mental illness
-parents are deceased
-parents are incarcerated
-parents are unwilling or unable to care
-military deployment
Kinship Care does NOT need a court order to be recognized.
The NYS Kinship Navigator is an information, referral and advocacy program for kinship caregivers in New York State. A kinship caregiver is an individual that is caring for a child that is not biologically their own. In New York State, there are an estimated 179,000 caregivers, 131,000 of whom are grandparents. Many others are aunts and uncles.
The Navigator seeks to assist these caregivers by providing information on financial assistance, legal information and referrals, and other types of issues that caregivers face when raising children in order to provide stability and permanency in the home.
A large piece of assistance that may be available to kinship care families is financial. There is funding available that the child may be eligible for, and the Navigator program will assist the family in pursuing it. Depending on the county in which the child is residing, there may be a tie in to pursuing child support from the parent(s) who are currently not taking care of the child. Each county handles this differently.
With any questions about this program, please visit their website www.nysnavigator.org or call the Helpline at 877-454-6463.
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