UMaine Workshop to Explore Working with Culturally Different Families
Contact: Lenard Kaye, 581-3444; Noreen Peters, 941-2347
ORONO – For Maine children being raised by grandparents or relatives other than biological parents, cultural differences can seriously affect the quality of a family’s experience with community support services such as schools or social service providers.
How social workers, guidance counselors, teachers and family members respond to and appreciate cultural differences – whether ethnic, racial, generational, geographic or even economic – can be either very helpful or very harmful.
The Maine Center on Aging at the University of Maine and the Relatives As Parents Project (RAPP) Task Force are holding a special workshop Friday, Nov. 4 to raise awareness of familial cultural differences with professionals, parents and relatives involved with what are called “kinship families.”
The free all-day workshop, from 9:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Bangor Room in the Memorial Union at UMaine, will be of interest to social workers, parents, grandparents and other stakeholders who work closely with children being cared for by relatives when biological parents cannot do so.
Expert speakers and panel discussions will challenge participants to think about how they approach their working relationships with relatives as surrogate parents, says Len Kaye, director of the UMaine Center on Aging.
“We have a growing number of minority cultures here in Maine,” adds Barbara Kates, director of Family Connections of Families and Children Together in Bangor, a cosponsor of the workshop. The Washington, D.C.-based Generations United, a national intergenerational membership organization, is funding the workshop.
“Maine children grow up in many different cultures all existing right here in Maine,” Kates says. “For example, it is likely that someone growing up in Aroostook County in a high income family where French is the first language will have somewhat different family experiences than someone who grew up in downtown Lewiston in a low income family. Incorrect assumptions about family structure and cultural traditions by social service agency employees working with such families, where relatives are raising the children, can result in miscommunication and inaccurate assessments of parenting effectiveness, according to Kates and Kaye.
“By increasing awareness, participants at this workshop can strengthen their ability to work effectively within the context of each client’s values and beliefs towards healthier family relationships,” he says. “As a result, participants will increase the cultural competency through which they relate to ‘grandfamilies’ from diverse backgrounds and build much needed trust and rapport.”
Speakers for the workshop, titled “Grandfamilies and Cultural Diversity: Building Cultural Competency,” include John Bear Mitchell, a member of the Penobscot Nation, associate director and Native Program Waiver Coordinator for the University of Maine System at the Wabanaki Center at UMaine. Mitchell also teaches introductory courses in Wabanaki history and contemporary issues of human diversity. His workshop talk is titled “Cultivating Diversity in Families: An Understanding of Human Diversity.”
Susan Nichols, executive director of the UMaine Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity, will moderate an afternoon discussion with panelists Claire Bolduc, Amy Cooper, and Lorraine Haynes – all area grandmothers or aunts with parenting experiences to share – and members of the Relatives As Parents Program (RAAP) Task Force.
“When outsiders are unfamiliar with a particular family’s unique cultural identity, the likelihood of assisting those families in meaningful ways is dramatically reduced,” Kaye says.
The workshop is part of the RAPP Task Force initiative co-chaired by the University of Maine Center on Aging and Families and Children Together, and funded by a grant from Generations United. The RAPP Task Force is dedicated to making it easier for grandparents and other family members raising relatives to access the same state support services as unrelated foster parents currently do.
To register for the Nov. 4 workshop, contact Noreen Peters at Families and Children Together, (207) 941-2347 or (npeters@familiesandchildren.org).