The Edgewood Children's Center and two other organizations held a national conference on services for grandparents and other family members who care for a child relative.

Kinship Care: A Natural Bridge, held in San Francisco, on August 13–15, 1997, drew some 1,000 attendees and was viewed as a first step towards expanding these services nationwide. It was co-sponsored by Edgewood (now called the Edgewood Center for Children and Families), the Child Welfare League of America, and the American Association of Retired Persons.

The conference sought to:

• Educate participants on services for adults who care for a child relative.
• Develop national policy recommendations.
• Disseminate model caregiver programs that could be broadly replicated.

Key Results:

• Participants attended workshops on model state policies, discussed policy development at the local and state levels, and trained caregivers and service providers to advocate for improved policies.
  
• More than 15 models of kinship support services were highlighted during the conference. These included Edgewood's Kinship Support Network, which provides support to grandparents and family members who raise children.
• Two networking sessions followed the conference. One addressed kinship care in the welfare reform era and the other highlighted the prospects for policy change at the state and national level.
• Proceedings of the 1997 conference were disseminated though a press conference and at individual briefings of 25 journalists.
  
  Stories on the conference were presented on local radio stations, a television station, and in The San Francisco Examiner. Twenty-five copies of a 20-minute videotape of conference highlights were distributed.