Kinship Care Online

Welcome to the Kinship Care 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, their strengths, service needs, the social policies that affect them and the best practices to be employed with these families and the individuals who reside in them.

Course Benefits
The study of kinship care meets a growing need among human service professionals, providing knowledge about an increasingly common family form. The 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 discussion and application of theoretical knowledge to current practice in the field, as it constantly evolves.

Who Should Register?
Kinship Care Online is ideal for adult professionals, graduate students, as well as national audiences in the social and behavioral sciences, human service professionals and helping professions such as:

• Social Work
• Clinical Psychology
• Community Nursing
• Corrections
• Counseling Psychology
• Drug Counseling
• Employee Assistance
• Gerontology
• And more!

Course Structure
Kinship Care is offered entirely through online instruction. 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, kinship caregivers, adults who grew up in kinship care and parents of children who have grown up with kin.

Course Topics
Kinship Care Online 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 and
  • Child welfare system
• Kinship care of children with special needs, child mental health and special education
• 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 caregiving families

Meet Your Instructor
Dr. James Gleeson is a tenured associate professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work and principal investigator for the Kinship Care Practice Project at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at UIC. 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 consistently 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, and informal kinship caregivers in families with no involvement with the child welfare system.

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