Senate Community Budget Issue Requests - Tracking Id #1531 Kinship Support Center
Requester:	Chris Zawisza John Ratliff		Organization:		Children First Project, Nova Southeastern University
Project Title:	Kinship Support Center		Date Submitted:		01/31/2000 1:15:55 PM
District Member:	Mandy Dawson		Service Area:		Statewide
Counties Affected:	{Statewide}
Recipient:	Kinship Support Center		Contact:		Chris Zawisza John Ratliff
	University of South Florida, School of Social Work		Contact Phone:		(954) 262-6028
	Tampa 33620
Project Description:
The Kinship Support Center is designed to bring university based resources to support the grandmas, aunts, and other relatives 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 Kinship 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 the 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 training.
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 increase in the number of relatives rearing their kin who receive the relative care-giver program benefits which they are qualified to receive hundreds of relatives rearing kin will receive training and become effective advocates for their families and others in their communities, in the public school system, with other families, and with the gatekeepers of the various programs. Employees of private agencies assuming responsibilities 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 relatives' 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 expand 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 generally, 8200 kids eligible for program & 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 Delegation
	Meeting Date:	02/01/2000