Systemic Practice With Kinship Care Families

Am I My Brother's Keeper: Adult Siblings Raising Younger Siblings

“…Adult siblings are more likely to adopt their younger siblings if they possess high levels of family involvement and social support. The critical nature of family and support networks has been noted by other studies (Burke et al, 1998;Ziminski, 2007). Likewise, those adult siblings who report higher levels of readiness/capacity and lower levels of dissatisfaction with resources are more likely to provide care for a younger sibling on a permanent basis.…”

“…Essentially, if adult sibling caregivers have positive communication with their family members, they are more likely to solicit support and assistance (Burke et al, 1998). For kinship caregivers, the support received from family members including birth parents may center on their ability to negotiate decisions on care, visitation, and the encouragement of favorable relationships with birth parents and other family members (Ziminski, 2007). Consequently, their ability to effectively communicate with family will invariably determine their level of family support.…”

Psychological Features Of Kinship Care Families: Interview Version For Guardians

“…(Bogomyakova, 2015). This may provoke the conflict between the child and the guardian (Ziminski, 2007). Another difference is specifics of child's image formed by the guardian under the influence of his/her own trauma from real or symbolic loss of the loved ones.…”

Dilemmas in kinship care: negotiating entitlements in therapy

“…Following a definition of kinship care, this paper briefly describes the research study and reviews its theoretical framework and analytic method. A fuller analysis of the research interviews and an overview of the characteristics of the research sample and the research's applicability to social work practice is to be found elsewhere (Ziminski, 2007). In this article I aim to focus on the analysis of a small number of therapy sessions with kinship care families, including a closer exploration of the dilemmas with which one particular family were struggling.…”

“…The major factors in the reasons for kinship care were: parental substance misuse, parental mental illness, previous paternal absence and parental bereavement. Further quantitative detail of the overall study and an exploration of the carers' interviews may be found in Ziminski (2007). This article focuses on the second part of the study which was an analysis of video-taped sessions with six families in family therapy involving two sibling carers (one half-brother, one sister), two maternal aunts and two paternal grandmothers, three of whom were from a black and minority ethnic background and three white British.…”