ATLANTA — As the spotlight continues on Georgia's foster care system, advocates hope more attention will be paid to a critical group of caregivers keeping kids out of state custody in the first place: Grandparents.
129,000 children are cared for by their grandparents in Georgia, according to the latest Kids Count data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Christine Owens is among the seniors spending her golden years raising her two grandchildren, and signs of the children surround her home.
Spelling words share whiteboard space with scripture, and homework and children’s books surround the kitchen table. Owens has been the primary caregiver for her granddaughter, 6, and grandson, 8 since both were in diapers. She juggles jobs and mortgage payments for her Habitat home, doing her best to provide.
“It was a big challenge because I used to have two jobs, and I had to downgrade a lot,” Owens shared, adding that she zeroed out her savings just so her grandson could be in quality daycare as an infant. A year after his birth, she also assumed care of her granddaughter.
“It was unexpected because I wasn't expecting to raise another baby, but we welcomed her, and I just passed down everything,” Owens shared.
But despite her passion for the children, she admits there are struggles. She stepped in to avoid any chance of the kids going into state custody, but she said she also relies on community resources to stay afloat.
“As my hours went less at work and then with my grandson's many challenges with his health,” Owens said. “We had to go to food banks. Foster Care Foundation has been a great blessing for us because they did give us clothes.”
Owens also sought support through kinship groups like Project GRANDD (Grandparents Raising And Nurturing Dependents with Disabilities). The caregiver program solely focuses on supporting grandparents raising grandchildren or other relative's children. For Rainie Jueschke, a former foster child herself, it’s not a question of whether kids are better off living with loved ones than in the foster care system. It’s a question of whether families get the support they deserve.
“We want these kids to be with family because that's the best place for them to be,” Jueschke, executive director for Innovative Solutions for Disadvantage and Disability (ISDD), which runs Project GRANDD, told 11Alive. “Child welfare research supports this completely. That child who's with family has protective factors that are just not available to kids in stranger foster care. They're with the people that they know who love them. They have cultural connections. So they have they experience far less trauma than children who are separated from family in foster care.”
But Jueschke believes the families her organization serves are also among Georgia's most vulnerable.
“They're given the children, and it's like good luck,” she added. “They don't know what to do, and they struggle with navigating these foreign systems, educational systems, health care systems, social service systems, none of which seem to address them, particularly because no one ever thought that a senior would be raising children.”
These grandparents fall under the umbrella of what’s known as "kinship care," where extended family members or family friends provide shelter and care for kids whose parents are not long able to care for them. Such relationships range between "public" kinship care, where families are involved with the child welfare system and kids are placed with relatives following a case of violence or neglect, or alternately, "private" or "informal" kinship care. Informal care typically occurs without the involvement of the state’s Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS).
Patricia Lawrence with Project Healthy Grandparents at Georgia State University says most of the grandparents her group serves are informal caregivers on a low or fixed income, just stepping up for the children and doing everything they can to keep families together.
“They want to keep their grandchildren together and with their kin,” Lawrence said. “But it comes at the expense of grandparents.”
The financial toil, in particular, is tough for seniors at this stage of life, at times prompting advocates to speak out.
A state senate committee focused on such issues in 2015, reporting on both the financial and mental hardship grandparents and elderly caregivers experience while also noting the $4 billion these caregivers save U.S. taxpayers each year by keeping kids out of the welfare system. Family stories prompted calls for more support ranging from clothing subsidies and general financial need to more funding for kinship support programs.
“It was seen over and over again in testimony that the grandparents and kinship caregivers would rather go through these hardships than place the children in the state foster care system, but they are hopeful for more assistance to provide for the children’s basic needs,” the report, signed by then-committee chair Stacey Abrams, states.
While Georgia has closed some gaps in recent years and now offers “public” kinship caregivers monthly payments comparable to licensed foster families, advocates say more awareness and help are needed for grandparents who step in before a DFCS case is opened. Current support includes the ability to apply for child support from a living parent as well as a one-time emergency Crisis Intervention Services Payments (CRISP). For grandparents who qualify for TANF, a $100 per month per child ‘Grandparents Raising Grandchildren’ subsidy is also available.
“Advocacy efforts need to focus on supporting grandparents who do this informally and better understand how many there are that are doing it so that we can have a better sense of how to support those families,” Lawrence shared. “My guess is that if we were to close the gap and support those families, it would be a very wise investment in the health of families, both physical and mental health.”
Owens meanwhile hopes her story will remind other grandparents they’re not alone.
“It seems like everyone thinks that grandparents have got it all together, and they got all this amount of finances, and it's not like that,” she said. “We are low-income. We are on a budget. But I know if your heart is in the right place, you can raise that baby. You can raise those children.”