With the recent award of a grant from Mountain Air Community Fund, High Country Caregivers has begun the process of hiring social workers to provide additional social work support to the Kinship Navigation program in Avery, Mitchell and Yancey counties.
“High Country Caregivers Kinship Navigation program is the region’s only support community of its kind,” said HCC’s executive director Jacob Willis. “Through this program, we offer support to caregivers who have taken on the responsibility of caring for their relatives’ children.”
HCC, through the Kinship Navigation program, currently provides support to 313 children and 254 caregivers.
The High Country Caregivers Kinship Navigation program was established in 2019 to provide comprehensive and whole-family care to empower and strengthen kinship caregivers including those caring for relatives who are not their biological children due to both long-term formal placement as well as informal placement. These services are provided by a professional kinship navigator who holds a social work degree.
Kinship navigators are responsible for resource distribution, referrals for legal, medical and financial services and coordination of support groups, family events, field trips, and childcare programming. They also handle the logistical needs of each program facet.
“We are currently serving 313 children and 254 caregivers,” Willis said. “That is double the amount we were serving a few years ago. This grant will provide us with additional social workers to help us as the number of families we serve grows.”
The Mountain Air Community Fund supports organizations that target health and economic development, education, literacy, the arts and family issues that benefit residents of Yancey County.
High Country Caregivers provide advocacy, support, and education for kinship caregivers and their families in Avery, Watauga, Ashe, Yancey, Mitchell and Wilkes counties. For more information, visit Highcountrycaregivers.org.