Importance of Kinship program continues to grow around the USA
November 8, 2011
(The following article was first published in the "Children's Voice" magazine this year.)
When Pat Owens brought her daughter and grandson, Michael, home from the hospital 15 years ago, she didn't imagine that she would be parenting again.
But shortly after Michael's birth, Owens' daughter began to disappear for long periods of time. One day 11 years ago, she left and never returned. No one has seen or heard from her since. This left Owens and her husband to raise their grandson. Now, 68 years old, Owens has been raising Michael on her own since 2006 when her husband passed away.
At times, Owens felt overwhelmed by the difficulties of being a parent for the second time.
When she realized there were other relative caregivers in her Frederick County, Maryland, community feeling the same way about the added responsibility of raising grandchildren, she formed a local support group.
The group has grown into a national organization, Grandfamilies of America, with several thousand members around the country.The members of Owens's organization represent a growing number of American grandparents who are caring for their grandchildren. Now more than ever before, grandparents are taking on the responsibility of their grandchildren--often with limited income and little or no support services. These kinship care households are headed by grandparents, great-grandparents, or other relative caregivers who have taken on the primary responsibility of caring for their grandchildren or the children of other relatives.
The statistics and the struggles speak to the scope, severity, and significance of the problem that has escalated to epidemic proportions.
The Brookdale Grandparent Caregiver Information Project based at the University of California at Berkeley Center on Aging has said that in the last 10 years, the number of children living with their grandparents has increased by 50 percent. Now, more than 2.6 million grandparents in America are raising 6 million grandchildren, according to the U.S. Census. Another 1.5 million children are being raised by other relatives.
The circumstances that contribute to the growing nationwide trend of grandparent caregiving are often sudden, stressful, and as diverse as the families involved. The range of reasons includes substance abuse, illness, child abuse and neglect, incarceration, death, domestic violence, or other serious problems. Regardless of the reasons why more grandparents are parenting again, they are vproviding a critical safety net for their grandchildren.
In recognition of the important role so many grandparents play in their grandchildren's lives, the Child Welfare League of America made 2011 as the "Year of the Grandparent: Keeping Kin Connected."
Throughout the year, CWLA is paying tribute to America's grandparents and other kinship caregivers and promoting this parenting model as an effective way to reduce the number of children entering the foster care system and keep them connected to family.
The yearlong campaign was officially launched at CWLA's National Conference in March. The campaign concludes in 2012 when CWLA hosts a "Year of the Grandparent: Keeping Kin Connected" award ceremony to honor grandparents and kinship providers selected by their respective Congressional delegations.
Although families led by kinship caregivers are one of the fastest growing family groups in the nation, funding for services to support them has never been adequate.
Consequently, economic hardships--in addition to legal, physical, and emotional challenges--are widespread among grandparent caregivers. The weight of these difficulties profoundly hinders their ability to support their grandchildren and maintain their own health and well-being. As the weak economy continues to drive the deepest cutbacks in vital social service programs we've seen in decades, these vulnerable families are facing an uncertain future.
Despite the dire circumstances and the daunting challenges, there is a positive side to "encore parenting"-- the grassroots efforts of support groups, advocacy organizations, and the innovative approaches that are gaining widespread attention.
Nationwide, one of the first and most critical challenges for grandparent caregivers is finding affordable housing to accommodate the addition of grandchildren. Recently, the CBS Evening News featured a report on a unique residence in Bronx, New York, that was constructed to address this imperative need.
The GrandParent Family Apartments (GFA), the only one of its kind in the country, is a six-story apartment building with 40 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom apartments specifically designed for grandparents raising grandchildren. Presbyterian Senior Services (PSS) partnered with the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing to build the $11.9 million housing development. Opened in 2005, the GFA supportive housing development is home to 50 families headed by grandparents 62 years or older with low incomes and legal custody of their grandchildren.
GFA is a vibrant village of mostly single grandmothers raising a total of 94 grandchildren. Only five of the households have both a grandmother and grandfather. The children in their custody range from toddlers to young adults. The oldest grandparent is 83 years old and she has been raising her two teenage grandchildren all of their lives.
This new brand of housing development wasn't designed as just a nice place for grandparents and their grandchildren to live. For grandparents who are struggling to give their grandchildren the best possible care, it takes much more than architecture. The real beauty of living in this building is being surrounded by the camaraderie of other families and a continuum of customized support services for the grandparents and the grandchildren.
Some of the wraparound services include afterschool programs, tutoring, sports, a summer camp, counseling, support groups, respite care, legal services, educational workshops, and a wide variety of recreational activities.
AARP's family expert Amy Goyer underscores the importance of kinship housing like the GrandParent Family Apartments that incorporates essential support services. She says that one of the biggest barriers for custodial grandparents is finding and navigating through the services and resources that already exist. All too often caregivers are uninformed about the legal options, public benefits, or services available and how to access them.
"What's needed is a massive media advocacy campaign using all of the sources where people get their information today. Beside the typical media outlets like newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet, extensive outreach to churches should be an essential part of that effort," she says. "The media campaign should not be targeted to seniors only because many of the grandparents raising grandchildren today are not seniors."
Goyer says legal issues are another major obstacle to accessing services because the vast majority of custodial grandparents have 'informal relationships' with their grandchildren, meaning that the grandchild's custody went directly from the parent to the grandparent without involvement of the child welfare system.
Because it's an informal relationship, there are few, if any, services available to the caregiver--including legal assistance. Since affordable legal representation is hard to come by, most informal caregivers don't have legal custody or guardianship. Some caregivers don't establish formal legal relationships because they want to avoid conflicts with the parents. Without a formal legal relationship, the caregiver may have considerable difficulty accessing school services, health care, financial assistance, affordable housing, and other much-needed support services.
In an effort to combat the difficulty of accessing services, the Fostering Connections to Success Act of 2008 allocated funding to establish centralized kinship navigator programs in states nationwide. These kinship navigator programs are designed to educate relative caregivers about programs and services available in their communities that will continually meet the needs of the children they are raising and their own needs as well.
Kinship navigator programs help relative caregivers gain access to legal assistance, support groups, financial assistance, food stamps, respite care, and other critical services. Besides helping kinship families better use existing programs and services, these navigator programs can also strengthen the capacity of public and private agencies to better serve the needs of kinship families.
The facts and the figures about the demographic changes in America's family structure certainly magnify a need for more specialized services tailored for families led by kinship caregivers and concerted efforts to build their trust in child welfare services. Some states have made significant progress in implementing the Fostering Connections provisions.
However, due dramatic budget cutbacks, implementation of the law's provisions has been slow in many states. At a national level, CWLA has been actively engaged in efforts to advance the implementation process. Although kinship caregivers are not necessarily traditional child welfare parents, as the Year of the Grandparent and other initiatives move forward, kinship caregivers have reason to hope that the system will continue to evolve to meet the needs of their families.
(This article was written by Beverly Jackson, a media and public relations consultant and a former television producer/director with experience in television news programming and production in major broadcast markets.)
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