House Community Budget Issue Requests - Tracking Id #1885 Kinship Support Center
Requester:	John Ratliff and Christina Zawisza		Organization:		Children First Project, Nova Southeastern University
Project Title:	Kinship Support Center		Date Submitted:		01/28/2000 4:55:44 PM
District Member:	Tracy Stafford		Service Area:		Statewide
Counties Affected:	Broward
Recipient:	Children First Project, NSU, Shepard Broad Law Center		Contact:		John Ratliff and Christina Zawisza
	3305 College Ave.		Contact Phone:		(954) 262-6028
	Ft. Lauderdale 33314
Project Description:
The Kinship Support Center is designed to bring university based resources to support grandmas, aunts, and other relatives who are raising their kin. As foster care numbers sky rocket in Florida and tens of thousands of children are threatened to consignment in foster care, the thousands of grandparents and aunts who have stepped up and shouldered the responsibility of guiding a second generation of their families to responsible adulthood are providing the state an enormous service. These families are confronted with enormous challenges, financial, legal, and social. State programs enacted to benefit them are too often wrapped in bureaucratic red tape and many legal protections designed for other purposes impact on their ability to establish new families.
Services Provided/Benefit to State:
The Kinships Support Center is designed to assist these relatives who have become champions for their kin's children and the state. The legal, policy, and social work support which the university based programs would be able to make available to the relatives, with this investment by the state will help them negotiate the bureaucratic maze, which limits access to services and benefits which the legislature has intended be extended to these families headed by relatives. It will also enable maximum utilization of existing social resources by brokering information and assistance from existing federal, state and local resources, and the delivery of state of the art services.
Measurable Outcome Anticipated:
Hundreds of grandparents and other relatives will receive effective consultations on their individual family situations and be directed to resources and appropriate legal choices to insure maximum benefit to the kin they are raising. Significant increases in the number or relatives rearing their kin who receive the relative caregiver program benefits, which they are qualified to receive. Hundreds of relatives rearing kin will receive training and become effective advocates for their families, others in their communities, the public school system, other families, and with the gatekeepers of the various programs. Employees of private agencies assuming responsiblities of foster care and family preservation will receive training so that effective systems for rapidly processing applications will be established by the agencies which serve the families. University students will be involved in helping relatives rearing kin to develop solutions to the obstacles their family face. As a consequence, stable families supported by resources in the community will be established. Supported extended families will become viable alternatives to foster care and sources of permanency for the children of destroyed nuclear families.
Amount requested from the State for this project this year:				$500,000
Total cost of the project:		$800,000

Request has been made to fund:			Operations
Is there Local Government or Private match for this request?						Yes
				In-Kind Amount:		$300,000
Was this project previously funded by the State?						Yes
	Fiscal Year:	1999-2000		Amount:		$100,000
Is future-year funding likely to be requested?						Yes
	Amount:	$500,000
	Purpose for future year funding:				Recurring Operations and Expansion of Center to other regional Academic bases
	Will this be an annual request?					Yes
Was this project included in an Agency's Budget Request?						No
Was this project included in the Governor's Recommended Budget?						No
Is there a documented need for this project?						Yes
	Documentation:	231,000 grandparents raising kin, 8,200 kids eligible for the program and less than half enrolled
Was this project request heard before a publicly noticed meeting of a body of elected officials (municipal, county, or state)?						Yes
	Hearing Body:	Broward County Legislative Delegation
	Meeting Date:	02/01/2000