UMaine Presents White Paper on Relatives as Parents Recommendations
Contact: BJ Kitchin, (207) 581-3615, George Manlove, (207) 581-3756
ORONO — The University of Maine’s Center on Aging and a consortium of child and aging advocacy agencies have proposed a series of recommendations to help enable older relatives to care for children when parents can’t.
The University of Maine’s Center on Aging, in conjunction with Families & Children Together, Family Connections in Bangor, presented the recommendations Jan. 13 in a policy white paper, capping three years of research into factors making it difficult for grandparents and other relatives to become recognized guardians for children who are unable to live with their parents.
Relatives taking over for parents in emergencies or in the midst of family crises is a growing problem, compounded by restrictive financial, policy and philosophical issues that put grandparents and other relatives at a disadvantage. Frequently, offers by relatives willing to step in to help keep frayed families together encounter bureaucratic and legal obstacles, according to child advocates and relative parents. Nationally, more than six million children live in households headed by grandparents or other relatives, according to the 2000 census. In Maine, some 11,000 children lived with relative parents in 2000.
More than 40 representatives from public and private organizations, in addition to state legislators, policy-makers, probate judges and social workers were joined Jan. 13 by aunts, uncles and grandparents at UMaine to review the recommendations from the Maine’s Relatives as Parents Project, coordinated by the Center on Aging. The recommendations will be forwarded to entities, including the Maine Legislature, that are positioned to implement changes in law and policy.
“We are offering a series of recommendations, which, if implemented, would dramatically improve the quality of life for those grandparents raising at-risk grandchildren and other young family members throughout the state,” says Lenard Kaye, director of the UMaine Center on Aging, who assisted principal white paper author Sandra Butler, interim director and associate professor in the UMaine School of Social Work.
Recommendations include providing relative parents the same access to financial reimbursements and financial aid that foster parents receive, the same access to educational and professional resources, including reimbursable family counseling sessions and day care, the same access to subsidized healthcare for children in their custody and the same levels of support from mental health and child welfare services.
Many of the proposals have less to do with money and more to do with providing moral and professional support for relatives as parents, according to Butler. There may be additional costs to the state initially, if financial services become available to this now largely excluded population, but Butler sees the changes as preemptive measures that will both help keep children in extended family settings and also save the state money later if fewer crises occur.
“All of these things are to some degree preventative,” she says, “if we can allow these relative parents to continue to work and remain a part of the employment base. The fact that these kinship families are taking in these children instead of going to foster parents, they are saving the state a lot of money.”
“This session provided a hands-on workshop for policy opinion leaders and practitioners to begin the process of leveraging their various roles to meaningfully create statewide change and necessary services in support of relative families and children,” says BJ Kitchin, a UMaine student in social work and workshop coordinator.
Barbara Kates of Families & Children Together has discussed the recommendations with grandparents groups, “and their response was, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is just what we need,'” she says. “I think it’s wonderful to come together at this time and say, yes, we know what’s needed and we’re going to be able to move forward.”
Information is available by calling the UMaine Center on Aging at (207) 581-3615. The white paper can be seen on the center website.