ORONO – Many grandparents in Maine are taking on the responsibility of raising their grandchildren because of family issues related to substance abuse and mental health disorders. The University of Maine Center on Aging and Family Connections of Bangor have pooled their efforts to form the Maine Parenting Relatives Mental Health and Substance Abuse Project to give those older adults the support and training they need.

Funded with $10,000 seed money from Generations United of Washington, D.C., in cooperation with the Brookdale Foundation of New York City, the project will be implemented over a period of two years through support groups, a statewide network and a statewide task force. The support groups and statewide network of agencies and individuals will be dedicated to addressing the challenges facing adults who have assumed later life parenting responsibilities. The task force will produce recommendations for policy makers. After the two years, the support groups and network will be self-sustaining.

“This program allows us to pay much needed attention to the unsung heroes in the family, the grandparents who are stepping in to preserve family well-being when parents are incapacitated because of substance abuse or mental health problems,” said Lenard Kaye, a professor of social work at UMaine and director of the UMaine Center on Aging. Kaye has the overall administrative and supervisory responsibility for the project.

The support groups will be formed for parenting relatives in areas of the state which are currently underserved and confront particular challenges associated with family substance abuse and mental health disorders. Sites may include Calais, Rockland, Skowhegan and towns in Aroostook and York counties.

Barbara Kates, director of Family Connections, will organize and provide technical assistance for the support groups.

“The support groups are very important because parenting can be a very isolating experience for an older adult. This allows them to see that there are others out there doing this too,” said Sandy Butler, the project’s program coordinator. Butler is an associate professor of social work and faculty scholar at the UMaine Center on Aging.

The statewide network will be organized by bringing together individuals, agencies and organizations that serve relative caregivers, specialize in assisting families with older adults as parents and provide children’s services. The network will allow participants to share information with a focus on mental health disorders and substance abuse issues and the related issues of poverty, abuse and family dysfunction. It will also serve as a forum for collaboration for geriatric, youth, health, mental health and substance abuse agencies that may not often work together and stimulate the expansion of mental health and substance abuse services for custodial grandparents and their families.

Components of the network will include an electronic listserv and Web site that will allow for ongoing communication and resource exchange.

Statewide conferences will provide opportunities for the network to convene and share information with the wider Maine community.

“This project is revolutionary in that it brings together organizations that don’t normally interact. It’s rare for organizations dedicated to serving youth and older adults to work together on a problem of major significance in the state,” said Kaye.

A statewide task force will be formed out of the statewide network. Its goals will be to gather existing information about current resources for parenting relatives, with special emphasis on mental health and substance abuse issues, and to carry out research on unmet needs and resources for these individuals. At the end of the two years it will prepare a white paper documenting the current status of parenting grandparents in Maine and presenting policy recommendations about the challenges created by mental health and substance abuse disorders.

The UMaine Center on Aging applied for the grant from Generations United at the request of Family Connections. A number of other organizations around the state have already expressed an interest in collaborating on the project, including Legal Services for the Elderly, Community Health and Counseling Services, Area Agencies on Aging, UMaine Cooperative Extension, the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services, the Bureau of Elder and Adult Services and the Department of Human Services.