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Showing posts from September, 2018

Parenting Your Kids' Kids - Considerations and Seeking Support

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September is National Kinship Care Month .     " National Kinship Care Month provides an opportunity to urge people in every State to join in recognizing and celebrating kinship care giving families and the tradition of families in the United States to help raise children…”   What is Kinship Care? Kinship  care refers to the care of children by relatives or, in some jurisdictions, close  family  friends (often referred to as fictive  kin ). Relatives are the preferred resource for children who must be removed from their birth parents because it maintains the children's connections with their  families . If you care about family preservation, then kinship care should be high on your list of causes to support.  Most kinship care happens outside of the child welfare system , which leaves families without support and education.  It is of the utmost importance to create new supports for these at-risk families, as the numbers of kinship families are growing (a

Back on the Birthfather Rollercoaster Awaiting DNA Results

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Benjamin Bratt, actor whose mother is Peruvian Peruvians are the  smallest percentage  of Latinos in the U.S. I am trying to keep my mind busy while I await the results of an Ancestry DNA test in order to solve a life-long mystery.   An excellent candidate has been found that fits a large part of the description of my biological father, including mine and my son’s DNA results.   However, in many ways this candidate may not fit.   Let me share with you why. I have a significant amount of outright conflicting information:   from the non-ID the adoption agency kept, to interviews with friends and family, it has felt very similar to crime stories where the investigators profile the murderer and try and create stories from the evidence at the scene of the crime.    Problem is, similar to criminal cold cases, there are many possible scenarios and memories that have become more convoluted over the years as time has gone by. We are talking about 50 years ago. Many of the peop