Lessons from the Field. Community‐based participatory research: The important role of university–community partnerships to support grandfamilies

• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Author: Christine A. Fruhauf,Loriena A. Yancura,Heather Greenwood‐Junkermeier,Nathaniel R. Riggs,Aimee L. Fox,A. Nancy Mendoza,Nancy Ooki
• Date: 01 October 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12672

BRIEF REPORT

Lessons from the Field. Community-based

participatory research: The important role of

university–community partnerships to support

grandfamilies

Christine A. Fruhauf

1

|Loriena A. Yancura

2

|

Heather Greenwood-Junkermeier

2

|Nathaniel R. Riggs

1

|

Aimee L. Fox

3

|A. Nancy Mendoza

4

|Nancy Ooki

2

1

Department of Human Development and

Family Studies, Colorado State University,

Colorado

2

Department of Family & Consumer Sciences,

University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, Hawaii,

United States

3

Center on Aging, Kansas State University,

Manhattan, Kansas, USA

4

College of Social Work, The Ohio State

University, Columbus, Ohio, United States

Correspondence

Christine A. Fruhauf, Department of Human

Development and Family Studies, Colorado

State University, Campus Delivery 1570,

Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.

Email: christine.fruhauf@colostate.edu

Funding information

National Institute of Food and Agriculture,

Grant/Award Number: Children Youth and

Families At-Risk (CYFAR) Sustai

Abstract

Objective: This article describes the development and

implementation of a tripartite educational intervention to

support custodial grandparents, grandchildren, and service

providers who work with grandfamilies.

Background: Grounded in theory and practice of working

with both grandparents and their grandchildren, this article

provides an overview of strategies and approaches for

recruitment and retention of grandfamilies in educational

intervention programming and a discussion of our approach

to bridging science into practice and the important role of

university–community partnerships using community-based

participatory research principles.

Implications: Although we provide specific examples from

the development and implementation of the multistate

GRANDcares program, these methods and the lessons

from the field may be broadly applied to many aspects of

working with skipped-generation and multigenerational

families.

KEYWORDS

community-based, grandchildren, grandparents, intervention,

service providers

Grandfamilies (i.e., family structures with grandparents and grandchildren in the home,

with or without the presence or assistance of a parent or the middle generation) are an all

too frequent vulnerable family form (Hayslip et al., 2019). The attention in the literature

from scholars is not surprising given that approximately 2.5 million grandparents in the

Received: 16 March 2021Revised: 24 January 2022Accepted: 1 February 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12672

© 2022 National Council on Family Relations.

1470 Family Relations. 2022;71:1470–1483.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare