Grandfamilies and kinship care in PEI: the facts.

Information reviewed September 2026. Program rules and service processes can change, so use the linked official source for current requirements.

Grandfamilies are not a fringe family form.

There is no single published PEI number that captures every kinship family.

Informal family care, GACP placements, private guardianship, relative adoption and multigenerational households are recorded in different systems. Some families may never appear in a child-welfare administrative count at all.

For that reason, Building GRAND-Families does not present one unsupported number as "the number of grandfamilies in PEI." Better provincial data is itself an important system-development goal.

What Canadian Census data tells us.

Statistics Canada's 2021 Census reported 553,855 children age 0 to 14 living with at least one grandparent. Of those, 36,860 lived with grandparent(s) and no parent in the household. Half of the children in that latter group lived with two grandparents, while many others lived with a grandmother or grandfather alone.

Statistics Canada 2021 Census table

What PEI research tells us.

The UPEI-led study Stepping Up and Stepping In: Exploring the Role of Nurses in Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren used conversational interviews with 12 grandparents raising grandchildren in rural Prince Edward Island. It documented the complexity of caregiving, the effects of parental mental illness and substance use in some families, and the challenge of navigating systems that do not always recognize the family form.

Building GRAND-Families founder Don Avery was a co-author and community research partner.

• Open-access Journal of Family Nursing article
• Building GRAND-Families research & impact

What PEI has in place today.

Why this matters to professionals and decision-makers.

• Forms that only say "parent" can exclude the actual caregiver.
• Responsibility for a child can arrive before money, documents or legal authority.
• Older caregivers may be simultaneously managing retirement, health needs and active parenting.
• Children may be grieving parents, siblings, home, school and routines even when the kinship placement is safe.
• Caregivers often navigate health, school, CRA, courts, Child Protection and community services at the same time.