INTERGENERATIONAL
PROJECT

Overview

The Rites of Passage Intergenerational Project provides grandparents raising grandchildren and parents with support services in order reduce caregiver stress and increase knowledge of parenting skills.

Need

According to US Census 2000 data, 2.4 million grandparents are taking on primary responsibility for their grandchildren's basic needs. Of these grandparents, 29% are African American, 17% are Hispanic/Latino and 47% are White.

Moreover, 29% are age 60 or over and 19% live in poverty. University of Florida sociologist Terry Mills reports black grandparent caregivers are more likely than their white counterparts to be unemployed, live below the poverty line and care for more grandchildren (Miami Herald, December 9, 2005).

Florida, ranks fourth in the nation with 147,893 grandparents raising grandchildren -- behind Oklahoma, Mississippi and Wisconsin. The Florida Area Agency on Aging estimates about 29,700 grandparents in Miami-Dade County are responsible for raising their grandchildren. The Alliance for Human Services reports there are 17,150—of this number 58% are single females and 27% live in poverty. However, most kinship care is informal and unaccounted for by any agency, making it difficult to accurately assess the number of families affected.

Many of the families involved in kinship care are not involved in the child welfare system and do not receive the amount or quality of support available to those families with child welfare oversight. Consequently, only 4,810 are accounted for in Miami through their involvement with the Department of Children and Families. Of these families 35% are African American, 19% are Hispanic/Latino and 43% are White.

Furthermore, conclusions from the Comprehensive Social Services Master Plan for Miami-Dade County published by the Alliance for Human Services, indicates that funding strategies are needed to explore and design models of care that meet the needs of older persons who themselves are caregivers and increase outreach to caregivers to provide education on improving their caretaker abilities and to use available respite services.

Couple these findings with the fact that often times, grandparent caregivers’ face a myriad of challenges in nearly all aspects of their lives when they assume the role of parent. They are prone to psychological and emotional strain, as well as feelings of helplessness and isolation. Grandparent caregivers also often neglect their own physical and emotional health because they give priority to the needs of their grandchildren (AARP).

Often the grandchildren in their care have unmet physical, emotional, and developmental needs that require special assistance because typically the social factors contributing to children requiring substitute caregivers, include neglect, abuse, abandonment, substance abuse, non-marital childbearing, mental illness, HIV/AIDS, emotional difficulties, teen pregnancy, incarceration, parental death, divorce, unemployment, and general familial dysfunction (Caputo, 2001, Flint & Perez-Porter, 1997, Landry-Meyer, 1999, Minkler & Roe, 1996 and Smith & Beltran, 2000).

Moreover, when relative caregivers are raising children informally without a legal relationship, such as legal custody or guardianship, these families have greater difficulty in accessing educational services, medical care, public assistance and support services. Cuddeback's (2004) review of the literature, reports evidence that grandparent kin caregivers have more burdens than grandparents not caring for grandchildren (e.g. limitations of daily activities, increased depression, lower levels of marital satisfaction, and poorer health). In sum, these caregivers must overcome tremendous burdens.

However, the concept of caregiver burden as it relates specifically to kinship care is relatively new. Cimmarusti (2000) links kinship caregiver burden to perceived social support and amount of emotional distress in the caregiver's experience. Therefore, it is important that we understand the issues related to kinship care and improve upon prevention strategies to intervene early to mediate kin caregiver burden in order to provide them with the assistance to help them continue providing care. Currently, there are eight times more children in grandparent-headed homes than in the foster care system.

In sum, grandparents raising grandchildren face multiple challenges caring for grandchildren whether there exists a formal or informal care giving relationship. Accordingly, Urgent, Inc. continues to provide support services to low and moderate income grandparents raising grandchildren.