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Kinship Care in the Opioid Epidemic: The Overlooked Caregivers of the Overlooked Victims

Summary

As our nation continues to reel from a decades-long opioid epidemic that has devastated families and communities, the public health response has focused on reducing fatal overdoses and treating addiction. Those are of course necessary and noble actions, but we must also be dedicated to strengthening supports for children in these families – the bystanders to this epidemic who are just as impacted yet rarely seen, save for haunting images of being stranded in minivans while their parents succumb to overdoses in the front seat.

 

Source: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Policy Lab (2018). Kinship Care in the Opioid Epidemic: The Overlooked Caregivers of the Overlooked Victims.