From Designing to Implementing Kincarolina: Strategies for Effective Community Engagement in Intervention Research

KinCarolina is a six-month, comprehensive support program for kinship caregivers raising children with disabilities or special healthcare needs in the Midlands region of South Carolina. To empower caregivers and increase their capacity in their role, KinCarolina offers the following types of support: Peer-to-peer supports, peer support groups, educational trainings, and financial supports. We believe that supporting caregiver self-efficacy and well-being will positively impact the well-being of the children in their care as well.

Community engagement is critical for designing and implementing interventions that specifically address and are tailored to community needs. KinCarolina is implemented at Kindred Hearts in South Carolina, an organization that serves kinship caregivers and has rich community connections. A core team of professionals and researchers are based in South Carolina; however, most of the KinCarolina team is spread across the country and are “outsiders� to the Midlands community. Therefore, it was necessary to authentically engage with caregivers, professionals, and organizational partners in the Midlands to understand their experiences and preferences and ensure that they were central stakeholders to program development. It was especially important to include individuals with lived experience throughout the program, in formal positions on the team, as peer liaisons for the enrolled caregivers, and on the Advisory Council. KinCarolina continues to strive for cultural responsiveness through intentional collaboration to build rich and authentic community connections.

In this roundtable, leaders of the KinCarolina team will share strategies used to engage the community at multiple levels and at different phases of the intervention study. Specifically, members of the KinCarolina team based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will share an overview of how the KinCarolina intervention was developed, based on previous research, a needs assessment, and intentional and meaningful engagement of community members and individuals with lived experience. Next, the founder of Kindred Hearts will share strategies for building intentional partnerships between key community organizations and academic institutions using a culturally responsive lens. The South Carolina Site Coordinator at the University of South Carolina will then discuss how KinCarolina has partnered with members of the community through formal positions on the team, with both professional and lived experience with kinship families and/or caregivers of children with disabilities. Finally, the KinCarolina Service Coordinator will share methods of community outreach used to connect with families, including partnerships with government and non-profit agencies, Lunch and Learn events with professionals in child- and family-serving organizations, participation as vendors at local events, features on traditional news media, and email and social media campaigns.

We will leave time for a discussion between presenters and session attendees about strategies they have used in their own projects for successful and meaningful community engagement, how to maintain collaborative and authentic relationships with community partners, and ways to navigate the intersection of service programming and intervention research. By the end of the roundtable, we hope that some of the strategies we used and the lessons we learned will be beneficial for other scholars interested in doing community-based intervention research.