ELKINS — The Elkins-Randolph County Library recently began its new Kinship Peer program and officials are already planning for the next session that they hope to host in the fall.

The program consists of “grandfamilies,” meaning children and their grandparents who are caring for them or taking over custody during a hard time. West Virginia ranks second in the country in regard to the percentage of children being raised by their grandparents.

“Two Fridays a month, the grandfamilies meet at the library,” explained Stephanie Murphy, executive director for the library. “They have a support and discussion time and they’re provided a meal that’s been donated by the community.”

“Then they receive a presentation from an expert who’s located specifically in Randolph County to address the issues that they may be having,” she said. Some of these issues include healthcare, custody and legal problems, interacting with the Randolph County school system and even trying to communicate with a different generation.

The children in this program meet in a different area of the library and participate in activities that are therapeutic in nature.

“Child psychologists and a school counselor who are volunteers lead their group in story and activity time, and they’re also available to help with homework,” Murphy said.

The program is open to grandfamilies with children of all ages, but the current group ranges from ages 4 to 12. The library is currently serving eight families, consisting of 25 people total.

“We’ll probably have to cut it off at 10 or 12 families because it starts getting to be too much and there’s not enough room in the library,” said Murphy.

This initial iteration of this program was made possible by a $2,000 grant from the Snowshoe Foundation, which the library is not guaranteed to receive again. Many materials were donated to the program as well, but Murphy isn’t sure they’ll be granted that charity again.

“The grandparents get a take-home notebook full of the contacts and reference information from all of the agencies,” Murphy said. “They keep that for future use. Things like that are things that were donated to us from the West Virginia Healthy Grandfamilies Program.”

Murphy also mentioned that this program wouldn’t be as successful as it currently is without the help of the friends of the library.

“The Elkins Bookhounds provide staffing for serving and cleanup and have provided additional funding for the program,” she said.

Murphy said this is the library’s effort to combat and assist with the growing opioid epidemic statewide, and she’s hoping that current members of the program will act as mentors for future grandfamilies.