Can intergenerational care improve nursing homes?

Black-led summer camps and community programs are addressing the dual challenge of rising child care costs and lack of culturally affirming options for Black families. Programs like Camp HBCYouth and Camp Legacy offer affordable, comprehensive outdoor summer camp experiences, complete with meals and extended care if needed. The programs also act as community builders, helping youth form friendships and strengthen their connections to the outdoors.

Dr. Kai Smith runs GRAAFICS, Gang Diversion, Reentry And Absent Fathers Intervention Centers, a program he founded to give young men and women an outlet to avoid criminal behavior. The program includes training courses in behavior modification and focuses especially on early prevention of violent behaviors in children through meaningful mentorship.

There are thousands of children caught in the midst of the migrant crisis, and many of them end up without their parents or with a relative. To avoid placing migrant children in facilities that would be unable to give them specialized care, people are stepping up to serve as foster parents for the time being. The foster parents support the children's emotional well being and sense of self, and now foster aunts—forming a relationship without taking over care—are also emerging. These initiatives help ease the process of starting over in a new place, especially for children.

In the middle of Milwaukee's toughest neighborhood, an organization called We Got This helps kids get off the streets and into the garden. Each summer, teens spend Saturdays working in a community garden to produce food for their neighbors. Andre Lee Ellis, the founder of We Got This, uses a "tough love" approach to set kids on a life-long path of confidence and respect.

SOS Children's Villages is a non-profit group that services more than 80,000 kids. Their successful model emphasizes love, family, and relationships, even though the children aren't being raised in a "traditional" family.

Trauma-informed care and social support systems encourage resilience in the face of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). With evidence of strong links between childhood trauma and long-term health, behavioral, and even social issues in adulthood, programs like the Best Beginnings Children’s Partnership of the Flathead Reservation and Lake County in Montana and the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) curriculum promote healing and resilient thinking. Creating positive, supportive environments also reduces the likelihood of passing down inter-generational trauma.

High caseworker turnover in Larimer County has led to poorer outcomes for children and high stress for the caseworkers themselves. To help combat this high turnover the salaries have been increased, retention incentives have been implemented as have job participation rewards and other methods.

Child-mentoring programs around the United States have helped at-risk youth during crucial years of development. However, New York City's Friends of the Children has improved the model by placing at-risk youth with adult mentors for 12 years. The forged relationships between mentor and developing child have greatly reduced the probability of teenage pregnancy, incarceration, and school drop-outs, and is cost saving.

A group in New York called Friends of the Children identifies high risk kids in the city and mentors them for 12 years helping them become emotionally stable and capable adults.

Across the United States, Friends of the Children is matching kindergartners with professional, paid mentors they will meet with for a few hours every week until they graduate high school. The nonprofit has been successfully breaking the cycle of generational poverty in over 30 cities since 1993.