Released April 19, 2007

DURHAM, N.H. - According to the 2000 U.S. Census, about six million children across the nation live in households headed by grandparents or other relatives. In New Hampshire, 12,458 children live with such "kinship caregivers," 3,869 of them in households without either parent present.

"Kinship caregivers and the children they care for have needs and concerns that go beyond the usual challenges of childrearing," says Thom Linehan, a UNH Cooperative Extension parent educator. Linehan heads a new Extension initiative called NHRAPP, http://extension.unh.edu/Family/NHRAPP/RAPP.htm, (Relatives as Parents Program), aimed, he says, "at helping connect people, ideas, and information in a fragmented system."

Identifying and supporting the unique needs of kinship families

"The simplest, most complete way to understand the magnitude of the kinship caregiving families' needs is to understand that the ways kids come into these situations--significant parental abuse or neglect, substance abuse or mental illness, incarceration, death of a parent, military deployments, teen parents who can't cope, long-term unemployment--almost always involve some kind of grief, loss, or trauma." says Linehan.

"Many kinship caregivers are older; they have significant medical or financial concerns of their own. They may have health concerns and financial of their own. The kids may have disabilities, mental health needs, attachment disorders, and they're often acting out, engaging in risky behaviors, or suffering attachment disorders. Both the children and the kinship caregivers may find themselves involved in legal difficulties. Each situation is unique.

Supported by a grant from the Brookdale Foundation, "NHRAPP has three components to address this universe of needs." says Linehan, "Our Web site will collect and organize informational resources and create interactive online forums for kinship-care families and the professionals who work with them. We'll also establish a statewide coalition of professionals and families working together to identify the needs and improve the systems that support kinship care families. Third, the project will help incubate new support groups by training new facilitators."

"So many glitches, so many roadblocks, so few places to go for help"

Pauline Smith of Somersworth has cared for two of her 11 grandchildren off and on since 1990--full time since 1995, when it became evident that neither her son nor the children's mother could do so.

"I've spent 50 years as a parent," says Smith, who adds that she's raised her grandchildren as a single parent, working full time managing the Rochester toll plaza until she retired in 2000.

"It's been very painful," Smith admits. "Sometimes people question whether we're even fit to raise our grandchildren."

"The children were four and five when they came to me," she says. "They had no health records, and I couldn't get access to them. Without the health records, I couldn't even enroll the children in school. [Kinship caregivers] have no legal rights--it took six weeks to get legal guardianship."

"There've been so many glitches in the road, so many roadblocks. There were so few places to go for help," says Smith. "Nobody seemed willing to give me information I didn't know enough to ask for; if I had known enough to ask for it, I wouldn't have had to ask."

"I'm so excited about this new program," Smith says. "I've signed up to join the [NHRAPP] Coalition and to be trained as a support- group facilitator."

Energized and ready for action

Smith was among the 34 caregivers and professionals who attended RAPP New Hampshire's first public event, a "community dialogue for kinship caregivers" March 13 in Concord.

"We had a great conversation and got great feedback," says Linehan "It was a chance for people to step back a bit from issues they face every day but rarely have a chance to reflect on or share in a public forum. One important thing we learned was that, while everyone has access to some specific information, there's a lot people don't know.

"For example, we have a lot of professional resources for kinship families here in New Hampshire, but they're distributed through a wide variety of agencies. It's very clear we some means of bringing all the information and all the people who care about these families together.

"People told us they felt the community dialogue was an important first step," says Linehan. "They left energized and ready to take action."

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http://extension.unh.edu/news/2007/04/relatives_as_parents_program_r.html