Abstract
This paper presents the perspectives of a small sample of eight kinship caregivers, who are grandparents raising their grandchildren in a mid-Western state. The study explored the grandparents’ experiences of family empowerment in public child welfare, using semi-structured qualitative interviews. The grandparents identify the services that they find useful, including both tangible resources and relational supports. They also highlight service gaps and unfulfilled needs, as well as aspects of their experience with public child welfare that they find concerning. The authors discuss the salience of including kinship grandparents’ voices in shaping the services provided for them and offer recommendations for strategies that could empower the growing population, and improve the public child welfare system so that it is more responsive to its changing environment.
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