Creating a Family is a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening foster, adoptive, and kinship families and the professionals who support them. In Transylvania County, their work focuses on a population that often goes unseen: grandparents and other relatives who step in to raise children when parents are unable to safely do so. Across North Carolina, approximately 84,000 children currently live in kinship care — and the caregivers who love them frequently face unexpected financial strain, emotional stress, and the unique challenges of parenting children impacted by trauma or prenatal substance exposure.
At the center of Creating a Family’s local efforts is a twice-monthly Kinship Caregiver Support Group, facilitated by a team that includes both a trained professional and a co-facilitator with lived kinship caregiving experience. The group offers peer connection, practical parenting guidance, self-care, and resource navigation — and for many participants, it serves as their primary source of support and community. Each year, the program directly serves 7–10 Transylvania County caregivers, each of whom is stabilizing an entire family unit.
Beyond the support group, Creating a Family connects caregivers to legal guidance through free kinship legal clinics, trauma-informed parenting resources, and a broad network of local partners — including Transylvania County Schools, local mental health providers, and First United Methodist Church of Brevard.
Lake Toxaway Charities is proud to support Creating a Family and its mission to ensure that kinship caregivers in our community are never left to navigate this journey alone.
For additional information, please contact www.CreatingAFamily.org. or Cecily Timmons, Development Director, at Cecily@creatinngafamily.org.
