At November’s Senior Network meeting, four speakers discussed grandparents raising their grandchildren. This program highlighted a unique group of caregivers that are often overlooked, a group that continues to grow locally and throughout the nation. These caregivers experience a unique set of challenges.
Nancy Mendoza, Human Development student at CSU in Fort Collins, Suzanna Hetchler, Seniors Ministry Director at Mountain View Presbyterian Church in Loveland, Karen McMahon, program manager at SummitStone’s Namaqua Center in Fort Collins, and Gail Engel, Founder of Grand Family Coalition, Inc. in Fort Collins gave multiple examples of grandparents raising their grandchildren under various and sometimes difficult circumstances.
Nancy explained the Grand Cares Project (caring for grand families) that her CSU department is managing with the University of Hawaii and the Grand Family Coalition group. In the U.S., 2.4 million grandparents are primary caregivers to the grandchildren. One in 10 grandchildren under 18 years age is living with the grandparents. In Colorado, it’s estimated that there has been a 73% rise in grand-parenting since 1990.
Why this happens is abandonment, divorce, and death of parents. Grandparents are found to be strong, resilient, resourceful, but face many challenges such as finances, custody issues, parent intervention, grandchildren behavior problems, grandparent health issues, school issues, romantic relationship issues, housing and starvation issues.
Many grandparent caregivers are single thus facing health problems including depression, medical, stress, and chronic illness. It’s important these caregivers get help to overcome the challenges through education. She stressed Larimer County has several support groups to help grandparent caregivers such as the new Powerful Tools for Grandfamilies.
CSU and Grand Family Coalition sponsored the first class and 8 grandparents graduated.
Grandparents: for more information on attending the Powerful Tools for Grandfamilies, call (970) 491-8204.
Karen explained that Namaqua Center provides services for grandparents with case managers or support services as needed. They promote grandparents caring for their grandchildren versus a foster home, where the treatment and care isn’t always the best. Namaqua Center facilitates two support groups for grandparents, and two parenting classes for grandparents too. Call the Namaqua Center at (970) 494-4231 for details.
Gail said the average age of grandparents raising grandchildren is between 75 to 80 years. Most of these caregivers are single woman. The caregivers provided many experiences about grand-parenting, who struggled paying rent, providing food or clothing for their grandchildren.
Gail needs volunteers to help with her coalition group. For more information call (970) 699-2837 or (970) 222-1168.
Pictured (l-r): Nancy Mendoza, Karen McMahon, Gail Engel, & Suzanna Hetchler