UMaine Center on Aging Co-Sponsor of Public Forum on Grandparents, Guardianship, Finances
Contact: George Manlove at (207 )581-3756
ORONO — Grandparents who provide homes for grandchildren who are at risk in their parents’ homes face a patchwork of confounding financial issues if they accept those children before state human services agencies intervene.
And if children are removed from homes by the Maine Department of Human Services, grandparents may be denied guardianship entirely.
“What do we want the state to be doing in these situations?” asks Barbara Kates of Families & Children Together, Family Connections in Bangor. “We don’t want the state to get involved unless it’s necessary — but then the relatives can’t get the resources to help care for the children. We want the relatives to get the resources without the state’s involvement.”
Kates’ organization and the University of Maine’s Center on Aging in Orono hope to help reverse that inequity for grandparents. In conjunction with about a dozen agencies or organizations involved with children, senior citizens or foster care programs, they are cosponsoring a public forum March 26 in Augusta. Its theme and title is “The Grandkids Come to Stay: How Maine Supports Families.”
The public forum, being held at the University of Maine at Augusta’s Jewett Hall, is free and runs from 8:30 to 11 a.m. From 11 a.m. to noon, the program offers a “resource fair,” to provide resources information for families in a more casual setting.
Members of the public and others involved with the foster care system — advocates, service providers, social workers, policy-makers and relative parents — are encouraged to attend to both find out about available social resources and to express their recommendations on how the system might be improved.
“The ultimate goal is to write a policy paper that will lead to revisions within the system,” says Sandra Butler, an associate professor of social work at the University of Maine and a co-organizer of the forum. “We’re hoping the discussion that comes out of this forum will help us in this regard.”
A panel of five grandmothers will start the discussions at 9 a.m., telling poignant stories about their personal experiences with the system. The forum is part of the ongoing “Relatives as Parents Project,” a statewide initiative to improve the circumstances for relatives caring for children throughout the state.
The forum comes at a time when the Maine Department of Human Services wants to reduce the number of children sent into foster homes, and keep children with relatives if possible. The state places a higher premium on kinship now than previously, according to Butler.
“When the children are at risk with the parent, most families resolve that issue before the Department of Human Services takes custody,” Kates adds. “They work things out themselves. It’s usually a pretty tragic situation when parents are no longer able to care for their children.”
But when children are taken care of by relatives instead of being placed in state care, they do not qualify for the financial aid offered to foster parents.
The forum is about getting better access to financial resources and not about human services placement decisions, Kates says, adding that the distinction is important.
She says grandparents face “an incredibly complex” patchwork of state and federal rules and regulations governing the availability of financial resources.
Guardians seeking financial help face shifting eligibility issues that change with such factors as income or mental or physical illness, for instance. If a child has a condition that makes him or her eligible for assistance from one program, it can make them ineligible for another, says Kates.
Butler says one of the first improvements she would like to see come from the forum is the modification of rules covering subsidies and resources to make it easier for grandparents to access financial aid. That could be done through a waiver program like those in other states, she says.
U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud is scheduled to attend the sessions, as are representatives for Congressman Tom Allen and U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
The keynote speaker for the program is Mary Bissell, a Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation and a former senior staff attorney with the Children’s Defense Fund, Child Welfare and Mental Health Division.
“Mary Bissell is a wonderful speaker and quite a national expert in this area,” Butler says.
Discussions also will address the need for federal funding and the Maine Kinship Caregiver Needs Assessment program.
Butler and Kates hope an open audience discussion period during the forum will lead to some solid recommendations that can be passed along to legislative and congressional representatives, in addition to state agency policy-makers.
The forum and resource fair “are open to everybody,” Butler says. “The resource fair is an opportunity for people to mingle and chat.”
In addition to the UMaine Center on Aging in Orono and the Families & Children Together, Family Connections, an advocacy group for parents and children, the forum is being cosponsored by and will provide information about the following agencies and organizations: the Department of Human Services’ Bureau of Health, Bureau of Child and Family Services and Bureau of Elder and Adult Services; Maine Children’s Alliance; Eastern Area Agency on Aging; Adoptive & Foster Families of Maine; Maine Equal Justice Partners; Maine Association of Independent Neighborhoods; National Association of Social Workers — Maine Chapter; Community Health & Counseling Services — Children’s and Crisis Services; Pine Tree Legal Assistance; Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence; Community Counseling Center; and the PenQuis Community Action Program.
More information is available by calling the Center on Aging at (207) 581-2382 or Barbara Kates at (207) 941-2347. The UMaine Center on Aging website, www.umaine.edu/mainecenteronaging, also has details in the UMCoA scrolling news box.