Kinship Care Online

Welcome to Kinship Care: A Comprehensive Overview, an online course offered by the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago!

What is Kinship Care?
Kinship Care is a term used to describe the practice of raising a relative’s child when the child’s parents are unable or unwilling to do so. This family form is growing and receiving considerable attention of policy makers, social service providers and researchers. The knowledge that exists about kinship care is fragmented, yet human service professionals need a comprehensive understanding of these families including their strengths, service needs, the social policies that affect them and the best practices that can help them.

Course Benefits
The study of Kinship Care meets a growing need among human service professionals, providing knowledge about an increasingly common family form. This course presents a comprehensive overview of kinship care and is easily accessible to both graduate students for graduate credit and to human service professionals for professional enrichment. Working professionals bring their current experiences and case situations into online discussions. This ensures the relevance of the discussions and application of theoretical knowledge to current practice in the field, as it constantly evolves. 

Who Should Register?
Kinship Care is ideal for professionals and graduate students in human service areas such as:

• Social Work
• Clinical, Counseling and Community Psychology
• Community Nursing
• Corrections
• Drug Counseling
• Gerontology
• Legal professionals
• And more!

This course is also appropriate for professionals and graduate students involved in social and behavioral sciences.

Course Structure
Kinship Care is offered entirely online. The course incorporates lectures, readings, video presentations, assignments and student assessments. In addition, the online format of the course increases the capacity for students to engage one another and the instructor through discussion forums.

Kinship Care also incorporates guest lectures and panel discussions conducted by a number of experts on kinship care, including human service professionals and kinship caregivers.

Course Topics
Kinship Care includes 15 modules that address the following areas:

• Prevalence, demographics and the reasons for kinship care arrangements
• The impact of kinship care on children, caregivers and  biological parents
• Practice and policy issues related to kinship care and
• Parental substance abuse
• Parental involvement in the criminal justice system
• Parental mental illness
• Child abuse and neglect
• The child welfare system
• Schools
• Best practice models across service systems (e.g. family group conferencing, family group decision making, family meetings, grandparent/kinship caregiver support groups, empowerment models for grandparents and other caregivers)
• Evaluating practice with families in kinship care arrangements
• Future directions for practice with kinship care families

Meet Your Instructor
Dr. Gleeson is a tenured associate professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work as well as principal investigator for the Kinship Care Practice Project at the Jane Addams College of Social Work. Dr. Gleeson and colleagues have been conducting research with formal and informal kinship caregivers, children in the care of relatives, and biological parents of children in kinship care since 1990. This research has been funded through grants from the U.S. Children’s Bureau, contracts with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, and additional funding from the Jane Addams Center for Social Policy and Research and the Jane Addams College of Social Work. Dr. Gleeson and his colleagues have examined kinship care from its varied perspectives, conducting research with grandparents raising grandchildren, relative foster families involved with the child welfare system, informal kinship caregivers in families with no involvement with the child welfare system, and parents in jail or returning from prison and the relatives caring for their children.

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