What is the future for parent support groups and are online support groups here to stay? How can we make them better? We talk with Dr. Jay Miller, Dean and Dorothy Miller Research Professor at the College of Social Work, University of Kentucky. He is a former foster youth and is now a prolific researcher in what works to support foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
In this episode, we cover:
This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
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Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
What is the future for parent support groups and are online support groups here to stay? How can we make them better? We talk with Dr. Jay Miller, Dean and Dorothy Miller Research Professor at the College of Social Work, University of Kentucky. He is a former foster youth and is now a prolific researcher in what works to support foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
In this episode, we cover:
This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily
Please pardon the errors, this is an automatic transcription.
0:00
Welcome to Creating a Family talk about adoption and foster care. I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host of this show, as well as the director of the nonprofit creating a family.org. Today, we're going to be talking about something near and dear to my heart. And we'll talk about why it's near and dear in a minute. But we're going to be talking about online parents support groups. We will be talking with Dr. Jay Miller is the dean and the Dorothy Miller, research professor at the College of Social Work at University of Kentucky. Welcome Dr. Miller, I am so glad to have you here.
0:36
Likewise, thanks so much for having me. Well, Creating a
0:39
Family has been involved in parent support groups, primarily foster adoptive and kinship parent support groups, almost exclusively. That's our demographic, parent support groups were really quite some time. And we developed as this by way of background just to explain why my interest is here, especially on the online part. We developed a curriculum that for parent support groups, and we were piloting the the first year we had developed it in the first year for piloting, it was going to be 2020. Well, that to participate in the pilot groups had to agree to start utilizing our curriculum in March of 2020. And we trained our facilitators in January and February. And then we all know what happened. But originally, it's it's truly a mixed blessing. The originally, we had only two of our pilots, we're going to be online, everybody else is going to be in person, which, from what our research and having been involved with support groups for so long, was about right. I mean, most most of the current thinking at the time, was that support groups really didn't need to be in person. And not too many people were even thinking about online. Well, come April, they everyone came back to us and said, Well, we've decided to go online. So we had to retrain all of our facilitators. And by really, probably by May, everybody was then online. The good news is that our from our evaluation, we collected data. And from our evaluation, originally, we had thought we would get mostly obviously data from in person. But as it turned out, we the exact opposite. We got data for only online for that first year, we're continuing to collect data on all of our groups. So we hope to be able to do some comparisons between our groups, our online and in person groups, but nonetheless, was and I had been fascinated by the in the 2020. Of course, everybody was in 2021, we really thought we would start seeing groups go back to meeting in person. It's been a mixed bag for our groups, the groups, and I'm curious if you've seen that, too. Have you seen? What are you seeing as far as groups meeting? Do you think that online is here to stay? Are you seeing that groups are wanting to go back to in person? What do you say?
3:04
Well, I think, you know, ultimately, what we have found is that a lot of our groups have wanted to maintain kind of meeting in the virtual space. And I think for us, you know, we have done a lot of work around conceptualizing what the support groups should look like. And the thing that we were really interested in from our standpoint, was building the group in a way that took into account the perspective of those who are going to participate. I think so many times traditionally, a lot of the models were kind of like, you know, we had this support group thing, and we're going to do it this way. And we just assumed that that was going to work. And but we really took a different approach. And so the thing that was really fascinating for us is that with our adoptive and kinship and support groups, we were running them virtual prior
3:51
to COVID. We were as well, some of them, right?
3:55
Yeah. And I think one of the reasons that we did is it was really around access, what we found is that, you know, with a lot of the face to face groups, we would run them we had the same loyal group of participants, which was awesome. And they were getting a whole lot of support. But as we saw new folks kind of come on, it really didn't expand until we started offering these virtual options. And it makes perfect sense to think that, you know, it's Tuesday evening, and particularly for adoptive and foster and kinship folks, you know, they have their caregiving, and they have young kids, and there's never really a perfect time to do it face to face. And we're always thinking about where we're going to meet that's convenient. And particularly, you know, we're in Kentucky. So there's some very rural areas, which, you know, people could find it difficult to get out. And so putting it in the virtual space meant that we were able to reach a number of different caregivers that have not participated before. And you know, we were joking the other day, I think we would have a mutiny if we try to go back to only face to face because people will become so used to it. There's so much More comfortable, you know, you don't have to factor in an hour of travel time either way more able to do them more frequently and more creatively, we have some lunchtime groups that we do now we have some first first in the morning groups that we do. And so it just really affords, you know, caregivers the flexibility to participate and interact with support in the way that they need it. So I think that they are here to stay. And I think moving forward, you will see that, you know, folks will will get that face to face interaction in different ways. But that support groups, I think, will be in the virtual space to stay.
5:35
Yeah, I would agree with you. I do, I will say that, I hope that we see a mix. I do hope to see some but we'll talk some about some other creative options of, of doing both. Let me pause here for a minute to tell you about a free educational resource. Thanks to our partners, the jockey being Family Foundation, we have 12 free online courses available now for you guys, you can go to the website, and this is a shortened link. And it's Bitly slash j, b f support. And that's bi T dot L y slash JBS support. And you can check out all 12 courses, you can utilize them for your foster parent training, in service training, check with your agency, but it's all agencies are accepting of it, you will get a certificate of completion at the end. An example of one course is taking care of yourself when parenting harder to parent kids. If you're parenting a hard to parent kid, you know how important it is to take care of yourself. So pop on over to Bitly slash JBf support. And thank you Jackie being family for allowing us to offer this. So as as I have been researching in this field, I was doing my search in a in a research library, online research library and typing in things like online support groups or whatever and not finding much and not finding much certainly in the foster adoptive and kinship space. And then I came upon a research that you did how the virtual interactive pilot program and I did a happy dance I was like somebody is researching what I care to know about. So you became my favorite person all of a sudden, my favorite research. So they tell us about what and you may have done something I have to admit I haven't. You may have done other research too. But start by talking about what you found in your virtual interactive pilot program that you did there at University of Kentucky.
7:45
Yeah, so like you when we, when we set out to conceptualize this group, we wanted to take an empirical approach. And I don't mean that to say that we wanted to do something that would be overly academic, and we'd write about it in a journal and no one would ever read it. Because that's what frankly, that's what happens with a lot of research, right?
8:05
Yes. Only people like me who hang out in research libraries ever say
8:09
yes, yes. Um, but we wanted to do it in a very pragmatic way that influenced how people were delivering the support groups. And so we embarked on this kind of multi phase project where in the first phase, we from a research standpoint, went around the states collecting and analyzing data around how people wanted to engage with support groups, and what they thought support groups should do and how they should function. And we took that data, and we wrote some papers about it. But we also used that data to actually develop and build out the full names. That is the adoption support for Kentucky virtual interaction program. And we call it ask for sure. But using that data, we built out this apparatus and said, We're going to launch this group. But one of the things that we were really surprised about is that it sounds like you saw the same thing. There were very few research studies that looked at the impact of participating in a group. And so we said, okay, what are some of the things that we would want to see from this group? What are some of the outcomes we want? And we said, okay, you know, we want people to feel less caregiver stress, because by I mean, why go to a support group, if you can't feel some support, right? We wanted to look at what we call parental competence or parental know how as it relates to adoptive Foster. In addition to the parental competence, we also want to look at information seeking behaviors. So you know, what we found is that when we did the conceptualization research, a lot of caregivers participated in support groups, not only for support, but to get information and share information as a mechanism of support. So we laid out all these things that we wanted to measure. And then as we implemented the group We embedded the research as part of how the group functioned. So that sounds similar to what you all did, we recruited facilitators who were indeed adoptive and foster parents. So they had that lived experience. We spent a lot of time training them in facilitation, as it relates to the virtual space, right? Like anybody who's facilitated a group knows that facilitating face to face is very, very different than facilitating virtually, you know, examples are, you know, people tend to get a little, they have a little braved use when they're online, and they say things that they otherwise wouldn't say, in face to face groups, or you have to kind of manage interactions in a different way. So we took a lot of time to train the facilitators. And then we launched the group. And we had a very explicit and clear delineation around how long we wanted the group to function, what we were going to measure when, and then based on that information and process, we started to analyze the data. And what we saw, Wow, it wasn't surprising to us, I think it was certainly a contribution in documenting the fact that folks who participated in the group, they, you know, they did find an experience that reduced stress, they did find an experience that information seeking was was high and that they were able to seek and get quality information, parental sense of competence, and parental confidence around being able to care for young people increased. And we set it up on kind of a pre post pattern. And so, you know, we can attribute some of those changes to the fact that folks were participating in the group, and that we really took the time to offer and train and support other facilitators in a way that made folks feel comfortable. And again, they they wanted to keep going and keep participating in groups. And from that one test group, we've now launched 16 different groups that we run at various times, we have specialized groups. So we have groups, for folks who are in kinship care, or foster care, or transracial adoption. We've also interestingly, moved into support groups for teens. So looking at the young people, one of the interesting things that we found is that, you know, while we were having these virtual support groups, we'd often see the teenagers running back and forth behind the caregiver. And so we said, you know, what would it look like to have a teen group and the same kind of way, and so it gave the teenager something to do while the caregiver was participating in the group. So we had some initial success with that. So it's one of these things that we really took the time to build out in a in a participatory way. And it's certainly something that we look forward to continuing to do in the future, and to really innovate and think creatively about how we can best support foster adoptive parents, I think at the end of the day, no matter what we're doing, that the ultimate aim is to provide a support, many of us have lived experience in the child welfare system, I spent time in foster care myself, so I know what that's like. And I know the stresses it brings about in caregiving. So we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support those caregivers. And they were doing it in a way that's informed and based in data.
13:18
Exactly. We also evaluate, listening to, and I knew this having read the having read your research, but we had, we also evaluate for decrease in stress, increase in confidence, and creation of a sense of community. Those are the those are the factors that we evaluate. And we have found a very similar thing. Now ours are not time limited in that we've created a library of curriculum that people go to and just topic basically say, oh, I want to learn about ACEs, or we want to talk about ACEs. And it's a turnkey, it's full service where it's got, you know, the video, the facilitator guide, the handouts, the additional resources and certificates of attendance and things like that. But we have found it so we were not necessarily measuring for information seeking. But but people who are coming we're getting information, which is we have found to be one of the factors. One of the key factors of success for support groups is that people feel like they have some of our participants have said they get some meat, you know, they're looking for something that's actually you know, helping them. So have you done other research on parent support groups? Particularly, I think that your specialty is in the area of adoptive Foster and kin. But even without that, have you done other research on that and online or otherwise?
14:39
So yes, I mean, we've done a number of different studies really kind of trying to get to a space where we can better understand how to deploy resources to support these caregivers. One of the things that we just finished up was looking at the mode and modality around virtual networks because I think To zoom has been the default for how folks have tried to do support groups, which can be difficult to manage at time. Some folks, you know, we, sometimes I'll hop on a meeting and they're using teams, right? And there's always kind of a disconnect, like, Oh, I'm used to using zoom. So I got to kind of react, what
15:16
happened to me yesterday? Yes. So caregivers
15:19
are going through that same thing. So we've really started to look at a modality, the like, is there a difference if I can see your face versus not seeing your face, how many people should be on the screen, like, there's all kinds of nuances that can start to impact the way that people engage with groups. And you know, the same way that we think about face to face or physical groups, a lot of those things don't hold true in the virtual space. So in the virtual space, you can have a scenario whereby, you know, frankly, not all caregivers are sold on support groups, right. And we do see some generational distinctions between our younger caregivers, at least in some of our studies, have interestingly been less inclined to participate in the virtual space. And it's more so around getting on with people you don't know you're, you're sharing your business with folks who you don't know you may not trust, the thing about virtual that's different is that you might have somebody in far western Kentucky, in a group with somebody in for Eastern Kentucky. And while there are certainly benefits to that, there's also this, this, this lack of inherent community in the sense that, I don't know you, you know, we don't have the same worker, etc, etc. So, you know, we were really getting into some of these nuances around the virtual space, and what that should be in look like, and the impact that that can have. And it's not the end of the world, if we have, I remember a very clean example. And one of the studies that we did, where one of the facilitators, they were kind of worried because people would get on and for the first session, they wouldn't show their face, right. And we get into the second or third, and all of a sudden, those people were now on camera, and you could see them. And we talked about in processed after the pilot period was over what that was about, and from some of the caregivers, they said, We know, we just kind of wanted to check it out, we wanted to see if it was something we wanted to participate in, and doing it virtually allow them to do that in a way that they wouldn't have done in a face to face group. So that's that's really where we're at now, in terms of some of the current research is assessing, what is the ideal platform? What are the ideal ground rules? Does it change depending on where you are, we've done a really interesting study around the difference of functioning for virtual support groups in urban areas versus rural areas. And we found some very clear distinctions and kind of how those things operate, and which of those groups can be most effective. So you know, it's one of those areas where we make a lot of assumptions. When we say support groups, you know, folks kind of in their mind, they make a lot of assumptions about what's happening and what's not. And we found that a lot of things that we assumed to be true, quite frankly, just aren't, and so on for us to kind of dive in and, and tear apart some of those things.
18:08
Well, let's talk about some of the specifics. I'd be curious to know, what you're seeing urban versus rural, because one of the things that we've seen from well, but both that we've seen is also from what research that I have been able to read, or been able to find was that that two of the best examples for use of online is in rural areas for the reasons you just mentioned, you know, distance, but also in urban areas because of traffic or just the hassle of using public transportation or whatever. So again, all comes back to time. So I'm curious to know what distinction you've seen between urban and rural online groups.
18:48
Yeah. So I think the first is important is that the context in terms of support groups are microcosms of the broader world, meaning the same dynamics you see, in every eighth day human interaction, you will see those in support groups. And so one of the things that we've found is there's always distinct differences in terms of stress relief, since a competency sense of support. Most of the times the urban groups will feel that those things are higher, or that they have more support or that their support groups were more impactful than perhaps an urban group or urban or rural, I'm sorry, perhaps a rural group, the urban, the urban group will sense that there's a higher than the rural group. Gotcha. And when you start to kind of tease that out about what's that about? Well, I mean, we know that that a lot of times the resources are kind of central to the urban areas, or at least, you know, here in Kentucky like you everywhere, things. And so you start to think about how that dynamic plays out in the support group. And it allows us to frame the support group in a different way. And so if we know that the the urban group is going to inherently have more access to Who supports, we can kind of supplement and take a different approach as a relates to some of the rural groups. We've also found it really helpful to mix the group's up, right. So a lot of times what we find is that they not only learn about the day to day pragmatics of caretaking, they also learn and share information about resources. So one example is we had a group that was mixed with urban and rural. And of course, there these are adoptive parents, and they're talking about their workers, right, and kind of the resources that they need in their relationship with their workers. And there was happened to be a rural family who had a newer worker, a less experienced worker, who may not have realized that, oh, you know, these adoptive parents are able to access this particular resource. And through this group, it was kind of like I would say, Hey, Don, you know, my worker said that you can do X, you should ask your worker, if you can do X two, you go ask and and all sudden, you're able to do this thing that you never thought you would have been able to do, because we decided to mix these groups in a very intentional way. So I think that being able to learn and discern the differences in outcomes, has allowed us to build and support the groups in a different way than we otherwise would have. Because I think there's a big assumption that, that they're just all the same. A support group is a support group is a support group. And that's just not the case.
21:30
Hey, guys, I like to say that, friends, don't let friends wander around the podcast universe in the dark, meaning most people hear about podcast from their friends from people they're talking with. So please let your friends particularly those obviously involved with adoption, foster or kinship, let them know about this podcast, that is the single best thing you can do for us. Because our mission is to get this information in the hands of as many people as possible. And we need people who are listening, and who like what they hear to share the news. So please go forth, and proselytize about the creating a family podcast, we really do appreciate it. So how do you create a sense of community and relationship building with online parent support groups?
22:22
In short, very intentionally, I think that it really starts with training the facilitator. So getting to the facilitator and understanding how to manage communication, how to deal with conflict, because it's going to be inherent to every group strategies on you know, there's always someone in a group that tends to talk a whole lot, you know, and kind of take up the time. And so how do you manage that? How do you manage oversharing? How do you manage scheduling, like, so we spend a lot of time and we actually have developed a certification program for adoptive parents who want to facilitate virtual support groups. And so all of our facilitators go through that program and get that training. And a lot of that is about kind of building commonality. So we start with, there's a concept that we measured, it's called homophily. And in short, it's how alike are we? Right? So if I'm in a group, and I asked, and I'm asked to measure a monopoly, I'm asking how do I proceed these other folks in relation to me are we a lot of like, are we not a lot like, and because we measure that we can track on it, it it's inherently connected to community as it relates to these groups. So we look at common experiences, we focus on those we focus on the facilitation and management piece, we focus on really letting the group kind of drive the content, one of the things that we used to do, quite frankly, that we stopped doing was, we would give the group's kind of topics like Oh, Tuesday night, we're going to have a support group, but the topic is going to be x. And what happened is there would be a lot of training and information going on, but not a lot of support it because the topic would kind of overtake the support pieces. And so we stopped kind of scripting them out and really letting the group drive, what the content was going to be and what they were going to interact around. And because we gave them and allow them that participatory input in what was happening. They had a different vested interest in sense of community, because they were able to kind of all coalesce around a common experience. And we have found and we think that that's what works best for a lot of these groups. Again, I think there's certainly a time for the kind of scripted content areas as it relates to support groups. But what can happen if you're not careful is that you get out of balance. And if it's an hour alone, and 50 minutes of it was structured content, we don't get to the informal support pieces that people may need. So you have to be intentional about creating community and then you have to set about a very participatory way to get people engaged, get people, you know, asking questions, we we do allow kind of in between groups, you know, folks will they can submit questions to other group members that they then talk about in the groups. So that's been really good and kind of building a sense of community. Understanding that a support group is not just the hour or two hours a week that you have it, a lot of support happens in between the actual group meetings. And so creating avenues for folks to engage in that kind of communication interaction is really important. So those are just a few of the things that have worked for us. And we found it to be really fruitful in the virtual space.
25:38
Yeah. And just going back to the topic versus non topic, while ours is topic based, the topic, the giving of information is probably about 20 minutes. And then discussion around the topic takes up the rest of the hour, hour and a half. Well, hour and a half is what we would say. So yeah. So again, I that is one thing that for that sense of community, is to create the opportunity to discuss in our case, it's discussing around a specific topic, but it is still discussing, because that's how we find our commonality.
26:11
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think even in that model, you know, having a space where, you know, you're letting your facilitator kind of understand that. Okay, on Tuesday night, we were supposed to talk about X, right? But on Monday, why happened. And so being able to adapt and kind of build in, you know, what's happening in the contemporary space with what the topic is, like, that's a really good way to streamline it. And then also always set aside some time to say, Alright, folks, what, what's happening in
26:42
real life? Yes, it's really, really, exactly, hence, the keeping of the, of the giving of information relatively short, so that they get some meat, but they also get a time to just catch up and also to talk about something different.
26:58
Do you all? Because I'm really interested in kind of how this may work in other spaces? Do you all allow for the interaction between participants between groups? Like so you know, we meet every Monday night is? Or are they interacting in between the Monday support group meetings,
27:16
they can argue the people who were there absolutely encourage that, because we think it's a good thing that some groups will choose to do it and some groups won't. What has been successful is, well, this cuts both ways, we actually we have not utilized it, because we haven't seen that it's effective, we have the ability, this is getting a little bit into the weeds. So for the audience, hang on a minute, but But Dr. Miller and I are getting into something you guys just hang on here. So we have the ability on our learning management system to create communities that people can then utilize. But more effective, we have found is to just do a closed Facebook group, the problem, the only problem that we have found is that some people are not too many. But there are some who are very anti Facebook, hence why we have this ability on our learning management system. So yeah, that's we encourage that. And some groups do, what have you found? I'm curious? Well, I
28:14
think I think it's absolutely instrumental particularly in the virtual space. And what we have found is that it makes the support group meetings much more fruitful, like they're starting in such a different place
28:26
that deaf community building is going on. Outside of the group, it says
28:31
in to, you know, we will have instances where there'll be an issue come up, they'll have some chatter about it. We actually used there's a, there's a private social media platform that we use that's connected to our LMS. But it allows people to kind of interact very much like
28:49
a social media space. That's what we have to exactly this. Yeah.
28:52
But what happens I mean, we've had caregivers kind of research a topic that would come up during those interactions, and then bring it to the support group, which there's nothing better than having some vested caregivers who are kind of bringing information based on some of the, you know,
29:09
now, I'm curious, have you found that if it's not on, and Facebook is the one that people use it that people are less likely to participate? Because that's what we found is that when we had it on our it's not a it's a private LMS group. It's basically it looks like, in some ways, it's more functional than Facebook. But we found that people participate significantly more when we kept it on a private closed Facebook group. Have you found the same or no? What?
29:37
Yes, so of course, you have some folks who they've just been socialized to a particular social media platform. And so that's the one that they think they need to use. I always jokingly say, people are as faithful as their options. So if, if the only thing we give them is Facebook, or whatever social media platform and that's all they use, we would you know, a lot of times we assume that Well, that's what they want to use. What we have found is that when we give them other options, they choose other options. Interestingly, you know, we went down the social media road. And for one particular group, what it led to is, they started meeting more frequently for shorter durations because of the activity that would happen on social media. And because, you know, sometimes with social media, you can't always offer the supports. Of course, from our standpoint, there's always some risk in terms of what's posted and who's who needs the response and the responsibility of managing.
30:36
That's why you don't do it. Don't do it for that reason. Exactly.
30:40
Yes. And so I think that it can definitely be a good tool for us, we have found that like promotion and sharing and like letting folks know, Hey, there's this group, it's this time there's I access it, it's been been extremely helpful. But I think, you know, we have to take into account a lot of the folks that we deal with are in the space of public child welfare, meaning they've had no options. They're public, foster parents, kinship providers, fictive kin, etc. And so there's always kind of some nuanced information, no matter how close the group may be, you see stuff on social media. So we always want to be very mindful of protecting information, protecting their identity more so you know, making sure that the young people's information is protected. So we tried to go a different route. And we found it to be helpful in terms of promotion and letting folks know that there's a group, but in terms of the actual functioning, we try to keep that in a different space. Yeah,
31:33
I could see that. And that, and the groups that utilize our curriculum, we're not running them, they're running them. And there are a lot of public agencies that are using it. And I think that that their hesitancy is that as well. I mean, I get it plus the idea of, well, it's just it gets complicated, because you've got, do we want complaints going on against agencies? And does the agency have the ability to get in there and respond, if this becomes a new inbox, so to speak? I mean, it's complicated. We respect any I mean, we, our idea, our mission is to increase the number of parents support groups by making it easy to run high quality groups. We don't, and we don't care if they have the offer, we would recommend it, but we understand why they would not. I'm curious about what because we have wrestled, we get this question a lot for online groups, and you said you've done some research, so I cannot wait to hear what you found. How many is too many? Or how few is too few? Because we've got a screen we've got, you know, so how many? How is that? What have you found?
32:31
Well, so you might not like the answer. And it depends on the platform. Right? So we actually went through where we for zoom. And we did a lot of research around the ideal number of people in a support group. In terms of facilitation, management, etc. Yeah, our data and research show there was going to be anywhere between 12 and 16. But one of the big drivers related to that was number one, the platform, meaning how do they show do they tell on the screen kind of what setup you have for folks to kind of see and interact. And then number two, the skill of the facilitator was the number one predictor in terms of perception around, you know, how many people needed to be in a group. And again, if you think about it makes common sense. Like if if a facilitator can't handle a big group within eight is too many, right? But if the facilitator is able to manage, and I think it also depends on the experience of the constellation of folks you have, if you have a bunch of new folks, you might want that to be smaller, at least in our experience, we found that, whereas we have more seasoned caregivers, we want that to be bigger. We've also found and we call them specialized groups. But I wholeheartedly believe, and there's data to suggest there's times when you mix caregivers, in terms of adoptive parents, with foster parents, with kinship providers, etc. But I've also always been very clear. And I've even said this in some of our research studies, every one of these caregiving groups has a very unique set of needs. I think sometimes we kind of pink them with a broad Child Welfare brush. And you can't do that when you're thinking about providing support. I mean, I say this about kin kinship is it is so much more complicated than foster parents, foster parents, just view your relationship, right? So you have to deal with it and support that in a different way. And I don't mean to say that any one is is worse than another. I simply mean is this all different?
34:31
And you know, mixing we actually we don't run that many groups ourselves as an organization. We run a couple but we have I could not agree with you more. The in particular make mixing, mixing foster and adoptive parents seems to not we've had good luck with that, because a lot of our foster parents are also adoptive parents. So it just that that has seen there are some differences. But but that seems to be a pretty easy combination. But We have not seen that mixing kinship parents with foster or adoptive parents, and I, and it's because their needs are different. And I also have talked with kinship providers who have said, and I don't know that they actually were being judged. But their feeling was that when the foster parents or the adoptive parents were frustrated at the birth parents of the children in their care, that kinship parents felt like, well, they're, they're viewing me in that same light. And there was also the kind of the shame of how did I end up in a situation, it's just all the complications, as you've just mentioned? So I completely agree with you that I think in particular kin needs to be. The problem is, then how do we get enough kin because we also struggled to get kin to participate? So anyway,
35:51
and that's why I think virtual, that's the key. And I think that again, you know, I always say the biggest difference between people is not race and it's not gender, it's generational. In terms of, you know, we're in Kentucky, in Kentucky, we have the highest proportion of relatives caring for another relative in the country. And overwhelmingly, those are grandparents raising their grandkids. And so one of the things that we've often tackled is kind of the tech divide around, okay, you know, if you say, I'm rolling out a virtual group, a lot of my grandparents who are kinship providers, you know, they're, they're not just readily gonna hop on and start that. So we've kind of planned all kinds of initiatives, again, like getting the teams involved as a mechanism to assist the grandparents and getting on this virtual group, which is, which was a really kind of creative, neat thing and worked out splendidly. In turn,
36:42
did you do that? Did you get the teens their own group? Or did the teen come on to help their grandparents get
36:48
we kind of we kind of started with the concept of we're doing this support group, it's around kin providers. And then we kind of went down the road of really targeting teens to say, look, we need your help here. Like we there's this tech gap of not I will say, I think sometimes, or if not a lot of times, the tech gap is overblown.
37:08
I totally agree.
37:10
We have found that yes, we make assumptions about
37:14
ageism, it's ageism.
37:17
But but but it is very real and spaces, and it's sometimes it's not about functionality is about trust, meaning they know how to do it, is just taking the time and you know, sometimes it's getting over the hump or participating in a group, if I can get the team to the put the zoom up and get it going. And hey, you know, ask your your relative to get on, we got a question for him or her they in. And that's been the way that we went about kind of building building that apparatus, but then also to get us back to these kind of specialized groups focusing on you know, aunts, and uncles and siblings, like there's not enough discussion around that those kinship providers, we often think about grandparents, and we need to, but we also must think about these other groups who they're there, and they're caring for these young people, we just don't don't think about them as much. So I think that that one way to get them involved is by deploying these virtual platforms. And then, you know, starting with we identified will be called support group champions. So we got a couple of caregivers who were really all about support groups and the impact they can have. And I tell you, your best salesperson are the caregivers themselves. And so they would go out and recruit people to be in their group. And you know, some of the places we would have somebody, they would kind of submit a form, they said, Hey, we want to start a support group, we want to start a virtual support group. And we say, Okay, well, you got to have eight people, you know, here's some resources, but you got to have eight people to start your group. And they would go out, and I'll tell you, within two hours, they call us back and say, I got two people, we're ready to go. So really kind of engaging them, we gave them some training, we call them the support group champions. And they would kind of go out and talk about the impact that support groups had for them. And I think ultimately, when you're, quote, unquote, selling the concept of a support group, people have to know and understand how it's going to benefit them. And that's just the brass tacks of it. And caregivers are the best I can I can spout all kinds of research and talk about all kinds of books and papers. But there's no better narrative than a caregiver saying I was able to get through this tough time. And I was able to do that. Because of this.
39:21
Yes, I Yeah, you're right. So you looked at different platforms, you said zoom, Microsoft Teams, and I imagine Google Beat would be in there, too. So what did were there differences between? And are there other platforms? I've just left out? And if Are there differences between them?
39:39
Yeah. So there are a number of different platforms that we looked at. And again, I think it goes back to facilitator preference like which one are they strongest on? And then the worst some just around kind of setup that? I mean, I think we've been in COVID long enough that most of the now are easier to set up. When we started doing a lot of this work again, it was pretty COVID So, you know, we we were kind of I remember we were talking about Microsoft Teams and Google Hangout, and a lot of people didn't know what we were talking about, like it was only two years ago. But we forget that there was a time when we do all this stuff. Yeah. So, you know, for us, it really boiled down to what was going on what was going to be sensible what could be managed, we also looked at access on your device. So which platform would work best on which device? Because interestingly, we have a lot of folks, and we found this in our research that we're accessing the virtual groups on their phone, we
40:33
found the king. Exactly, yeah.
40:36
And so different platforms perform differently on different types of phones. And so we got into looking at, you know, are you right handed or left handed? And what kind of phone do you have? And what kind of, you know, where's the app on your screen, all of those kinds of things that would impact how people would interplay. And I think the thing you have to know with virtual groups, is that while it's very easy to access, it's equally easy to not meaning if I try to get on, and I can't figure out the login, I'm done. I'm not going to I'm not going to call a bunch of people, I'm not going to go do that. Now, if I've drove out to the church up the street to a tinder group. I'm there like I'm staying there. And I'm, I'm going to
41:17
find the darn door if I can't find it. Yeah, exactly.
41:21
But if I'm at home, and there's a bunch of stuff going around, and my shows about to come on, I'm just as likely to x out as I am to log on. So a lot of it will boil down to accessibility and really working with the facilitators on the platform that they preferred. Assessing this accessibility, and then going through a screening process for their participants in terms of what they had access to how they were going to access times a day, what else was going on in their house, you know, one of the one of the things we never thought we would have to deal with his Wi Fi capacity. I'm a big believer in there's not a set time for support groups, like everybody always has, it's like Tuesday night at seven or Thursday night at seven. I'm like, No, you, you build the group around what's convenient for most folks, right? And so we had one group, they were going to do a nine o'clock group, because that's when everything was convenient. And what they very quickly figured out was that was also the same time that a lot of teenagers were logging into school and such. And so though, there were Wi Fi issues in terms of access, again, something we never thought we would have to think about in terms of a group, but we did and so the platform can vary. At the end of the day, it's all about access, or accessibility. It's all about the comfort of the facilitator in managing the tool. And then in terms of general functionality, I think we're to the point now where most of them have similar functions in terms of muting is seeing you in facilitation. We've went through, you know, do you want to do it in webinar mode? Do you want to do it in Tao mode? Do you? Do you have your setups where if somebody speaking, they pop up big and everybody else is small? Those kinds of nuances we work through to
42:57
find any of those were better? Or did you find any difference between any of those things?
43:04
What we saw? Yes, the
43:05
other platforms have it. But for
43:06
us, when when everyone could see everyone on the screen, the Tao versions at the same time, that was what was most preferable. And quite frankly, we actually did some analysis that those groups yielded the highest changes in support. Interesting. Well, while you won't, well, you would never as a researcher equate it to only that, it's certainly a factor from the perspective of the participants of being able to see everybody at the same time, you know, there's a lot of interactions and reactions and people making faces and things that go on that you can read a lot into, if you can your body at the same time. So that those are kind of the key functions. And again, I think what we've learned is, it wasn't this way when we started but now a lot of functionality is the same. So it's really opened up the avenues in terms of being able to offer virtual support groups.
43:57
I want to thank hopscotch adoptions for their long standing support of creating a family as an organization and creating a family and this podcast from creating a family. They have supported us through the years and we are I just cannot tell you how appreciative we are further support. Hopscotch adoptions is a Hague accredited international adoption agency, placing children from Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Ghana, Guiana, Morocco, Pakistan, Serbia, and Ukraine. They specialize in the placement of children with Down Syndrome and other special needs. In addition to doing kinship adoptions, they can place children throughout the US, and they offer home study services as well as post adoption support to residents of North Carolina and New York. So what do you where do you see well, first of all, what is your experience with what we're loosely I think everyone's calling hybrid groups and That's a pretty, that's a pretty broad definition. And because a pretty broad category, it can include things like having in person groups at the same time and have virtual participants in the in person group. That's one idea. And the other idea that we've seen groups trying to use is have the same kind of program. But do it in person, say on Monday at noon, and then virtual Thursday night at seven, you know, the very same type thing. We're going to be talking about adverse childhood experiences, and what all that means. And we're going to, if people are interested, we're going to take the adverse childhood experience quiz. And then we're going to talk. So that's another way. So what has been your experience? And there may be I am sure, there are other ways. So it loosely speaking in the hybrid, what's your experience?
45:53
Yes. So we've tested all these, the the, the hybrid, at least for us, does not perform as well as, as the other groups.
46:01
Do you mean, the Hotbird? Where there is a person, the virtual and the in person or at the same time? Yes, where you
46:07
are, essentially, you have a facilitator trying to manage the physical as well as casting people in. And I think it's really just that it boils down to logistics. It's a balancing if I have three people face to face, and then 10 people virtually what does that mean? How do I balance that? There's also in talking to some of the participants, and we did these qualitative interviews for some of the groups, there was a differential trust factor in terms of the people I was with and the physical space versus the people that I was interacting with. Yeah, yeah, I think that that makes perfect sense. And so we've been very clear that we are going to have either or, but we are going to build in spaces to interact in person. And so a lot of times, those will be more of our social events or picnics, we don't, we're very careful to not frame them as support groups per se, don't get me wrong, support groups, their support definitely happening. But we want to be very clear about the model and delivery in terms of the avenue that we're going. I always caution to say, ultimately, every group is as unique as the people in it, meaning there's a unique composition of dynamics when you get folks together. And every group has a character, meaning collectively a collective care. And so you should always try to do what works for your group. And some people might like a an on and off kind of situation, or a face to face virtual, we kind of alternating weeks, I think the blended meaning at the same time, it gets really tricky for the facilitator, and that hasn't worked for us, it's not to say that it won't work for other folks. But I think simply managing that. And I can tell you, as an educator, you know, when we went to COVID, I run a fully online academic program, I run a hybrid program, and I run a fully face to face program. And the hardest part of COVID was having people in the seats as well as virtually to be being in it just makes the management tricky. And you know, you're talking about some really deep, heavy things in the support groups. And so, you know, I don't you're trying to manage those. And there's always something like, Oh, hey, speak up, I can't hear you, you know, and yeah, the Wi Fi goes out and you sound like a robot. There's all these kinds of things that can factor in I think it's much better to at least for us to have it one way or another.
48:30
Yeah. Where do you see the future? I mean, how do you see? And the other thing, let me back up, which is actually feeds into the question of where you see the future. We have made such a huge jump in technology in the last two years. And as you well pointed out, people's ability to access the technology has also even more, even a bigger jump there. Where do you see the future for support groups and online to you? And if you had an ideal world? Where would what type of what do you want the platforms to be able to do?
49:04
Well, Miss dawn, I tell you, I ultimately think we're going to get to a space where we have to ask the question, do we still do face to face groups? Like what do we invest in it? Uh Huh. Interesting. And I'll tell you if you really want to know the answer. And I say this, everybody who's thinking about doing a group, schedule a virtual and a face to face at the same time, and the participants will tell you which ones they want to participate in, by which ones they show up to. I think for a lot of us, even myself, if it's March and the weather's nice, it sounds really great to get out and go to my car and drive to a support group like that sounds, you know, pleasurable, is different in December when it's dark at five o'clock, and it's freezing outside and are the kids but they're not quite acting right or there's some school stuff going on. And so we have to think about access and how we can have the most access or get people the most access to these groups, one of the things that we're working on now around some simulation is is the VR space. Where I tell you, I have an eight year old and he, you've been asking for this Oculus, this Oculus VR, video game situation, apparently. And of course, um, you know, I know, I don't, I don't know a whole lot about it. But he finally convinces me to get one and I get one and it gets to the house, and it's late at night. So he goes to bed and I start kind of tinkering with it. And like four hours later, when I've been on him, become a believer, because you start to kind of see the potential. And it's, it's almost as if you don't realize you're not there. So you get all of the benefits of a face to face space, with none of the hassles of having to access to now, please, I am not saying that there's not value in the human connection, I'm I'm in social work, right? Like I'm all about being able to connect. But in the support group space, I really think that's the direction we're going. One of the next things that we're looking to pilot starting in June, is a fully kind of a vr Virtual Reality support group where we have small group, we're piloting, you know, all of them will have access and get these headsets. And we're going to work through what a support group looks like in that space. So I'm excited to kind of test that and see what happens. But I think that that's the future you because you the technology is getting so good to where you could participate and not realize that you're not there. And I think once it gets that seamless, that that's going to be the preferred the preferred mechanism, you see it now, you know, I read something where the Super Bowl there literally you can go to the Super Bowl by putting on this headset, and you'll be front row and it's 360. And it the tech is really getting to a space where we can do these kinds of things. I joke with my folks all the time, if I can get on my phone and text and pull up and get somebody to bring my groceries out to my car. We should be figuring out how to efficiently so I think that's the future. I think we need to do it responsibly. I think we need to do it ethically. We need to ensure safety of people and information. But I think we're getting to a point where we have those possibilities. And it would be neglectful of us to not explore them.
52:26
Wow. I cannot wait to read your this. I cannot wait and I promise you I will put I will share this widely. I am fascinated by this. Thank you so much, Dr. J. Miller for being with us today to talk about a topic as you can tell I am fascinated by and I love the research you are doing and I am so very appreciative that you're doing it. And so thank you. Thanks for being with us today. And everyone else. See you again next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai