Supporting Grandparents

Supporting Grandparents

Delia: In the situation of the opioid crisis, I have a granddaughter who was going to be removed by the Department of Children and Families. And she has an older sister that was also going to be removed. I decided I couldn't let that happen at all. So, we decided to go to the courts and ask for guardianship.

Berta Velilla: We've been concerned with the number of grandparents that are all of the sudden responsible for these young children, babies and toddlers, after they've raised their own kids.

Delia: Having been a parent already and becoming a new grandparent with these new behavioral situations, it was very difficult.

Toscha Blalock: When they suddenly have the responsibility of parenting, unexpectedly, usually they need everything.

Berta: They're in a different place in their lives. They don't have the same level of energy. They're having to deal with things that are very different, like taking your child to preschool. 

Toscha: They don't have the clothing or the multiple sets of diapers as the children are aging. 

Delia: The oldest one was having terrible tantrums and situations.

Marcy: When you get children that are involved with parents that are using, they tend to have a very unstable life as far as random bedtimes, eating junk food instead of a nice dinner. They weren't being mistreated in any way, but there was no schedule.

Linda Botelho: It's a difficult dilemma to balance. 

Toscha: You know, when you are expecting a child and you've got nine months to prepare, there's a whole different process to how you can do that. But when it's all of a sudden, what we find is our ... Grandparents are just sort of taken aback and have to start from the beginning. 

Delia: I found Head Start because I was struggling at home with the children, and I needed some kind of day care, but I definitely could not pay $225 a week. I didn't know where to go. I remembered child care, Head Start. That's where I went, never knowing what a fabulous program this was.

Toscha: We can connect them with clothing services. We can connect them with cribs. We can connect them with food banks even.

Marcy: They also look into whether the kids have their medical updated. 

Delia: I never imagined that they were going to be taking care of the girls, teaching the girls, and helping the family as a whole.

Toscha: If a family is starting from nothing and trying to figure out how to take care of a child, we can point them into the direction that they need to go.  

Berta: We've tried to foster opportunities to link grandparents with each other so they can be part of a support network.

Delia: So, the staff gave me a lot of support. I feel empowered now as a grandmother, and as a mother, and as a person going through this opioid crisis, and I feel confident that my children will be good just because they went to Head Start.