More than 175 attended Parenting Revisited: Life on a Trampoline: A Kinship Conference for Grandparents and Relatives Raising Children and Those Who Support Them October 8 in West Lebanon.

The conference was co-sponsored by UNH Cooperative Extension’s RAPP (Relatives As Parents Program) initiative and VKAP (Vermont Kin as Parents.) The conference featured Dr. Joseph Crumbley’s address “What’s Unique and Different about Kinship Care?” Dr. Crumbley has co-authored a book with Robert Little entitled "Relatives Raising Children: An Overview of Kinship Care." He received the Child Welfare League’s Excellence in Kinship Care Practice award and is the current board president of the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC).

Maggie Bishop, director, NH Division of Children, Youth and Families, shown in the photo on the right, and Steve Dale, commissioner of the Vermont Dept. for Children and Families, attended the conference, which provided resources and workshops that included safety, well-being and permanency issues in kinship families, parental incarceration and an overview of the fostering connections legislation.

About six million children across the nation live in households headed by grandparents or other relatives. In New Hampshire, approximately 12,458 children live with kinship caregivers, 3,869 of them in households without either parent present.

NH RAPP is a program of UNH Cooperative Extension with funding from The Brookdale Foundation and NH AARP.