UMaine Grant to Aid Relative Parents in Northern Maine
Contact: Lenard Kaye, 581-3483; Marcia Sibley, (207) 794-6700; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The UMaine Center on Aging is using technology — the Internet — to help provide several new services for grandparents and other relatives who serve as foster parents in remote parts of northern Penobscot and southern Aroostook counties.
The Center on Aging recently received a $10,000 grant from the Brookdale Foundation in New York to fund a two-year project to bolster support services for kinship or “grandfamilies.” It allows the center, in conjunction with two partner agencies, to continue groundbreaking work it started in 2002 with a survey of the difficulties facing grandparents and others who serve as parents for relative children.
The center received the grant in April and is currently expanding several existing services and launching new ones under the Relatives as Parents Program (RAPP). The purpose of RAPP is to enable grandparents and other relatives who serve as parents — when children’s biological parents are unable to care for them — the same services, privileges and financial assistance that is available for unrelated foster parents. More than a dozen agencies or organizations in Maine that oversee or provide services for foster children make up a RAPP Task Force, which guides project priorities.
“We are delighted that this is now the third consecutive RAPP award that the center has received, allowing us to extend the reach of our efforts to serving ‘grandfamilies’ in extremely rural communities that have been traditionally underserved,” says Lenard Kaye, professor of social work and director of the Center on Aging.
New services being offered in the Lincoln and Millinocket areas and in southern Aroostook County will provide free support, information and aid to grandfamilies in remote regions where there are few resources or opportunities for relative parents to get assistance. The Internet will be used for live chats and seminars.
“This is what we consider the third sequence of activities that has received combined funding for a problem we think is very important, and that is grandparents serving as parents,” Kaye says. “We’re doing some very unique and original activities in this project.”
Only four states in addition to Maine received Brookdale Foundation grants under this initiative.
The funding will enable the Center on Aging, working with Families And Children Together (FACT) of Bangor and Health Access Network (HAN) in Lincoln to: identify rural relative caregivers not being served by existing programs and establish support groups for them; offer a series of Internet-based discussions for caregivers who cannot conveniently travel to places where services are available; and establish a pilot voucher system to keep children safely occupied in community recreation programs while grandparents attend as many as nine support group meetings in year one and 12 in year two.
Four Internet seminars with on-line discussions also are being planned over the two-year grant period to reach people in remote areas and often miles from existing support programs. The first of the seminars is set for Oct. 4-5.
Additionally, the grant will allow the Center on Aging and its partners to generate four caregiver tip sheets over the next two years, and plan a day-long conference on legal issues facing relative parents and the specialists who work with children and families.
Kaye says a lack of communication and information about services is a problem among kinship families in northern communities, often compounded by transportation, health and financial issues in rural communities. “That’s one of the major challenges facing these folks; they don’t know what’s out there for support services,” he says.
Marcia Sibley, clinical director in HAN’s Lincoln office, says the expanded services are expected to help many grandfamilies in the agency’s service area.
“At Health Access Network, we recognize the need to expand our communities’ existing services and offer our dedicated grandparents and relative caregivers additional resources that will be made available through the generosity of this grant, and also the services that are currently available,” she says. “We