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Granny's Manifesto
By Mary Bissell, Progressive Trail
June 04, 2004
More than 4.5 million American children live with their grandparents-most often because parents are unable to provide care. These grandparent-headed homes keep kids out of foster care and save taxpayers billions of dollars each year. But holes in funding and social services threaten this most important safety net. Attorney Mary Bissell spells out the steps required to keep the system in balance.
Mary Bissell, an attorney, is a fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy institute in Washington, D. C.
They fight over how to fix it and how to fund it, but Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing in this contentious election year: America's troubled foster care system is in dire need of repair. From New Jersey to Texas to California, states are unveiling unprecedented plans to stop the steady stream of child tragedies, including nationally publicized cases of starvation and murder. To expedite the reform process, the Pew Commission on Foster Care recently released its promising recommendations, issued by a panel of child welfare experts, to improve both federal foster care financing mechanisms and court oversight of child welfare cases.
Amid these highly touted initiatives, however, is a lesser-known prevention effort that is quietly and effectively working to keep thousands of children out of the foster care system. Who is behind this impressive movement? Grandparents like Gwen Bartholomew.
Eight years ago, Ms. Bartholomew got the call every mother dreads. Trapped in a violent relationship, her daughter had called the police on an abusive boyfriend. Bartholomew's young grandchildren, who had witnessed the latest attack, had been placed in emergency foster care. "I took the next plane from New Orleans to Los Angeles," remembers Bartholomew. "I looked the judge in the eye and said, 'I'm their grandmother and I'm here to take my grandkids home."
Grandparents and other relatives are often the best answer to care for at-risk children whose parents struggle with substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, mental illness and other serious problems. Across the United States, more than 4.5 million children live in households headed by their grandparents, a 30 percent increase over last 10 years. In about one-third of these households, there are no parents present to help with daily child rearing responsibilities or to provide economic support.
Grandparents and other relative caregivers offer emotional stability for some of the country's most vulnerable children, but they also save the federal government money. According to Generations United, a national policy organization, if even one-fourth of the children currently living with grandparents entered the foster care system, it would cost taxpayers an estimated $6.5 billion dollars per year.
Despite the safety net they provide for thousands of children, the demands of grandparents and other relatives raising children are often ignored by policy makers and government agencies that delay or deny even the most basic supportive services. This is especially problematic for the approximately one-fifth of kinship care families who live beneath the poverty line.
So as the Pew Commission and other state panels introduce their solutions to the foster care crisis, America's grandparent caregivers have come up with their own domestic agenda-a back-to-the-basics approach to help them keep their grandchildren out of foster care.
1. More accessible information: Grandparents' most common complaint is the lack of accurate information about cash assistance, Medicaid and other important programs that serve children. Social service workers in all relevant agencies need better training on how program eligibility guidelines apply to children in grandparent-headed families.
2. Flexible financial support: Working grandparents may only need help buying new bunk beds. Retired grandparents living on a fixed income may require ongoing financial support for their grandchildren through federal programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. Local government and nonprofit agencies need to establish more flexible funding sources to serve a continuum of family needs.
3. Quality child care: Many grandparents are still working when they unexpectedly take in their grandchildren. So who watches the kids while they work? Like all parents, grandparent caregivers need access to high-quality, affordable child care and after-school activities for their grandchildren.
4. Reliable housing: When grandparents take in children, they often lose their apartments, especially when they live in public housing. Says Sylvie de Toledo, author of Grandparents as Parents , "some grandparents in my support group have even had to live in motels because they were evicted from senior housing that doesn't allow children." As required by federal law, local public housing authorities need to do a better job transitioning grandparent-headed families into housing that safely accommodates their growing families.
5. Special education advocacy: Children raised by their grandparents sometimes struggle with learning disabilities and other special needs as legacies of their parents' abuse or abandonment. Local school districts should offer grandparent caregivers more help negotiating special education and related services on behalf of a child.
6. Legal services: In order to obtain legal guardianship of the children they are raising, grandparents need to go to court. Unfortunately, most grandparents' incomes are too high to qualify for free legal aid, but too low to pay the high cost of a private attorney. Private attorneys and local bar associations can help by adjusting their rates based on the needs of the families or by volunteering their services at no cost.
7. Respite care: Caregivers need someone reliable to watch their grandchildren while they take care of their own medical and other personal needs. Local community and faith-based organizations-many of which already offer child care on the premises-should open their facilities to neighborhood caregivers on a regularly scheduled basis.
8. Affordable transportation: Getting grandchildren to and from child care, school and after-school activities can be a nightmare for grandparents without a car or a convenient bus route. Unless local communities provide transportation subsidies, low-income grandparents and grandparents with disabilities are unable to attend parent-teacher conferences, appointments for specialized medical care, or even a child's soccer game.
9. Better treatment from agency workers: "If you don't appreciate the job we do with these kids, work somewhere else!" stresses Bartholomew, who remembers one former case worker who "talked down to her like a child." Grandparents, she says, often tell her they are afraid to report poor treatment for fear the child welfare agency will take their grandchildren away from them.
10. Respect: Grandparents raising grandchildren need encouragement and support from everyone-from their next-door neighbors to state and federal legislators. "It doesn't cost a penny, but it means the world to us," says Bartholomew. "When you help the grandparents, you help the children, too."
In the daily lives of grandparents raising grandchildren, common sense ideas make the best policy. Now, caregivers hope federal and state policy makers will consider their list of demands as part of any broader foster care reform efforts.
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