The Grandparent Trap

Bette Hoxie was thrilled with the birth of her grandson. Like most grandparents, she wanted the best for him from the beginning. She loaded up on supplies, bought him a new car seat, and helped bring him home from the hospital. As Hoxie’s son and his girlfriend began to struggle with the demands of parenting, however, she became increasingly concerned.

Soon, state social workers had to intervene. “I’ve had him ever since,” said Hoxie, whose 5-year-old grandson is now thriving under her care and remains close with his parents.

Hoxie’s story is more common that you may think.

More than 5,074 Maine grandparents are raising children whose parents are challenged by substance abuse, incarceration, mental illness, domestic violence, and other crises. That doesn’t even include the untold number of aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, and neighbors who take in children in similarly troubled circumstances.

Ironically, these committed caregivers, who have stepped forward to protect some of the state’s most at-risk children, often find themselves trapped, understanding little about how to get the help they need.

In fact, the thing that Maine grandparents need the most is often the hardest to come by: information.

“Grandparents aren’t really told about all the services that are out there,” says Hoxie, who drove back and forth from her job in Old Town to a child care center in Bangor for a year before she found out her grandson was eligible for child care down the block. Other caregivers have reported spending their entire retirement savings to pay for medical care, only to find out their grandchildren had been eligible for Medicaid.

Grandparents also may not anticipate the unforeseen consequences of applying for certain government benefits. Amy Cooper of Bangor thought she was making the right decision to apply for disability benefits for her grandson, but the modest income resulted in a reduction in her food stamps and a rent increase in her government-subsidized housing.

Troy’s Joedy Labonville and her husband are raising six great nieces and nephews, several of whom have special needs as a result of their parents’ substance abuse. “I was told I could qualify for more food stamps, but that my vehicle was worth too much,” says Joedy, “since we live in a rural area, getting rid of our van would mean choosing between having enough food and getting our kids to the doctor.”

So what can the state do to help?

Set up a kinship navigator program – a statewide resource and referral hot-line and website staffed by specialists trained to help Maine kinship care families access accurate information on health insurance, disability benefits, cash assistance, foster care, special education advocacy, and a variety of other helpful supports.

A kinship navigator program would not only help families. It would help the state minimize long-term expenditures by encouraging the use of existing programs and preventive supports to keep children with their families and out of more costly foster care placements. It would also build on the successful public-private partnerships that are already helping Maine kinship care families.

The Maine Department of Human Services, for example, currently funds Family Connections, a program run by the Bangor-based agency, Families and Children Together. In partnership with University of Maine Center on Aging and others, this important program provides information, support groups, case management, and an array of other services to kinship care families. A statewide program could help established organizations like these improve their reach, especially to those families in remote rural areas and to the 15 percent of Maine grandparent caregivers who live in poverty.

A navigator staff sensitized to the unique dynamics of kinship care families would also provide another important benefit grandparents agree is a rare commodity among government agencies: respect. Says Kathleen Roberti, a South Paris grandmother raising her 12-year-old grandson, “it’s past time to put the ‘human’ back in human services.”

Information is power. But for many grandparent caregivers, information brings something infinitely more precious: a second chance for their grandchildren. In considering a kinship navigator program, Maine would do well to follow the advice of its grandparents. “It all comes down to how you count your riches,” says Labonville, “for us, our wealth is our children.”

Mary Bissell, a fellow at the New America Foundation, spoke recent at “The Grandkids Come to Stay: How Maine Supports Families,” a forum sponsored by the Relatives as Parents Project Statewide Initiative at the University of Maine. For more information, call 1-866-298-0896 or log on to www.kinshipconnections.org