ORONO – The University of Maine 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. 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 – to receive 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,” said 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 said. “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 of Bangor and Health Access Network in Lincoln, to do several things:

. To identify rural relative caregivers not being served by existing programs and establish support groups for them.

. To offer a series of Internet-based discussions for caregivers who cannot conveniently travel to places where services are available.

. To 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 online discussions also are being planned over the two-year grant period to reach people in remote areas miles from existing support programs. The first of the seminars is set for Oct. 4-5.

In addition, 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 daylong conference on legal issues facing relative parents and the specialists who work with children and families.

Kaye said 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 said.

Marcia Sibley, clinical director in Health Access Network’s Lincoln office, said 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 said. “We look forward to working together with UMCoA and FACT to offer our support for RAPP opportunities and education that will be offered to our families of northern Penobscot County.”

Health Access Network provides services for 14,000 residents from 19 communities in the Lincoln-Millinocket area. Families And Children Together provides services in the Bangor area. Both agencies will promote the new and expanded services by word of mouth, fliers and through several Web sites. The Center on Aging will provide overall administrative direction and plan all the project’s educational components.

Further details are available by calling Tracey Cousineau in Health Access Network’s Lincoln office at 794-6700; Yvette Herring in Health Access Network’s Millinocket office at (866) 426-4584 or Jennifer Crittenden at UMaine, 581-2249.