September is Kinship Care Awareness Month

Kinship care, which is part of the foster care system, helps children keep some familiar connections when they cannot stay with their birth families. 

An aunt, godmother, grandparent, teacher, coach, neighbor or any other adult with an emotionally significant relationship to the child can be considered kin by New York State and provide care for a child when parents can’t or won’t.

Through kinship care, a child has the possibility of maintaining familial, cultural and community ties. Maintaining these connections, keeping children in familiar neighborhoods and schools, and keeping them closer to friends and support systems lessens the trauma of physical separation from birth parents and families and the life a child knew.

When a child enters foster care, removal from the home is often sudden—it can even occur in the middle of the night, if deemed necessary by authorities. 

In a moment, children would otherwise be living with people they don’t know, in a home they have never been to. 

Navigating a new home and new foster parents is always a challenge; adding a new school and new friends makes it even tougher for a child in foster care to begin the healing process.

However, children who are able to live with kin while in foster care tend to do well. They are:

More likely to stay connected to sibling groups, extended family, and loved ones

Have better behavioral and mental health outcomes

Experience fewer school changes

Less likely to reenter foster care if returning to birth parents

More likely to reach a permanent safe living situation. In a recent study, 78 percent of teens living in a relative’s foster home achieved permanency.

In New York State, kinship foster parents could receive financial, legal and referral support, accessible through a program called the NYS Kinship Navigator. For more information, visit ocfs.ny.gov/programs/kinship/.

Northern Rivers Family of Services

Albany, NY

Molinaro: Pass bipartisan funding bill to keep government open

Continuing to spend beyond our means hurts our economy and mortgages away our children’s future. 

A shutdown would impact working families, seniors, service members, veterans and the most vulnerable among us. To avoid this, we need serious negotiations and a bipartisan agreement. 

I am working to keep and support keeping the government open while bending the current rate of unsustainable federal spending.

As a mayor and county executive, I delivered balanced budgets—understanding that our government must be responsible to the taxpayer and the country. Partisan posturing and paralysis in Washington has to stop getting in the way of sensible fiscal policy. 

Time is of the essence. I urge the White House and Congressional leaders to deliver a bipartisan government funding agreement that keeps the government open and uses taxpayer dollars more wisely. 

I support and am working for a smaller, smarter and more efficient federal government.

U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro

Washington, D.C.

We have an impact on climate change

Excellent letter, Rebekah, helping enable readers to better understand the impacts of their actions and choices, and the effects these activities have on the planet (e.g. emitting two metric tons of CO2 equivalent melts 68 square feet of Arctic sea ice). 

Framing that energy use (when derived from fossil fuels) and those emissions within the perspective of other world citizens (the average global carbon footprint per person is 4.6 metric tons/year, while the average carbon footprint per American is more than three times that, at 15 metric tons per person) should be sobering for all of us.

Sharing lifestyle choices that we can all consider, such as cutting back on the amount of animal products we eat or following a plant-based diet, provides us with a blueprint for doing better by the planet, ourselves and all the biodiversity we love and that sustains us.

Don Hamilton

Milanville, PA

On the flimsy issues of old and rotten kids

America likes their leaders young and strong—women, men, whomever. Biden is old and he looks it. Above his shoe lifts, under his hair dye and beneath the cosmetics, Trump is nearly just as old. 

So how is “old” an election issue? In addition, they both have their share of reprehensible children. So, what could be the deal there? 

Allegedly, Biden’s son Hunter has done the dirty with cocaine and engaged in certain nefarious money schemes, while the Trump kids, in the image of Dad, have used their influence to scam and unscrupulously wring money out of anyone they could. 

Also, I will give a special shout-out to Eric and Don Jr. for hunting and trophy-collecting endangered animals across the world. 

So, let’s assume that “old” and “rotten kids” are not seminal election factors between these two candidates. Then, what about the rest of the story?

We have Trump’s multiple impeachments (two), multiple indictments (four: two federal, two state—in New York and Georgia), conviction as a sexual offender and habitual financial manipulations and scams. 

These illicit adventures include Trump University, Trump Wine, Trump Steaks, Save America, The Trump Foundation (remember the portrait and the $2 million fine?), Stop the Steal, The Trump Organization (convicted of tax evasion) and Trump’s manipulation of an imaginary veteran’s organization’s $2 million. 

Of course, there are so many other matters, such as Trump’s extramarital involvements with many women, menstrual shaming, illicit payoffs, misuse of Build the Wall funds, unscrupulous pardons (for sale?), questionable Saudi royal family deals, playing nice with dictators; Putin, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong-un, Orban, etc.

In truth, there is neither the space nor the time.

Now, about Joe Biden, he is an experienced politician who has sometimes made mistakes and he is undoubtedly old. 

Gosh and gee whiz, American voters, can you please figure out this one!

John Pace

Honesdale, PA

A hint hidden plainly in sight?

The dramatic Feast of Trumpets (Yom Tru’a) heralds autumn in Israel as well as here. (It is commonly associated with Rosh HaShana on many calendars.)

Unique to this soul-stirring, shofar-sounding Feast is that it is the only one of the seven appointed feasts ordered in the Torah (Numbers 29:1-6) that begins during a new moon when, throughout the ages,

No one knows the day nor exact hour of its arrival. Thus, two days are set, allowing for two watching witnesses to announce its first silvery piercing of the darkness. 

Herein lies a potential “endtimes” clue for those familiar with some of Jesus’s words regarding His glorious return “But of that (exact) day and hour no one knows.” (Matt 24:36).

By no means do I propose anything other than what is written in the Torah and the Gospels. Rather, I encourage folks to read context, as space is limited here.

However, I’ve thought it worth sharing an insight into what may be a clue hidden plainly “in sight” regarding the Feast of Trumpets and why it may hint at that “Last Trumpet” reported yet to sound. (1Cor.15).

Michelle (Sackett) Schroeder 

Callicoon, NY

We need a Democrat in the 19th CD

As Democrats do, I accepted Marc Molinaro’s election victory and he is my congressman. Since he ran as a moderate Republican with mainstream values, I was reasonably confident he could be an asset to the 19th CD. 

That confidence is shredded. He has produced nothing for the 19th while joining with his MAGA colleagues in Congress to produce nothing for the nation except threats of impeaching President Biden or voting to deny reproductive health services for military women. 

None of this helps a single person in Mr. Molinaro’s district. Nor does attacking the prosecutors who have indicted Donald Trump for his assaults on our democracy on January 6, 2021 and in Georgia. 

I do not understand why Mr. Molinaro cannot take a clear stand against insurrection and for the American way. We need to make him a one-term congressman.

Meanwhile, President Biden and Democrats have produced a remarkable trail of progress by negotiating Medicare drug prices, rebuilding our infrastructure, protecting abortion rights and actively going after the military guns culture and the hate messages that Trump and his GOP minions use to poison our political environment. To help protect our democracy we need to elect a Democrat in the 19th CD.

Edward Kornbluh, DDS

Schodack Landing, NY