ARTICLES / Children / When
Family Ties Turn into Entanglements... /
Other ArticlesBy Judy Paschalis
The situation quickly becomes bewildering
because the grandparents, or other relatives, may
not have legal papers that would entitle them to
enroll children in school or obtain health care for
the children. Finding legal advice from an
affordable attorney and also from an attorney who is
well-versed in the law that is involved in kinship
families is not easy. These legal difficulties
often drive relative caregivers “underground” and
this is one of the main reasons that those who work
with kinship families think there are far more
kinship families than the research shows.
Finances also are an issue. Financial
assistance and health insurance for the children may
be available from public agencies for the children;
however, even with this assistance, many relatives
find the extra people in the household really
squeezes the budget, to say nothing of the crowding
that may occur in the house itself.
But all these difficulties pale beside the stress
that the family “entanglements” cause the caregiver
and children.
Caregivers have told the following: the
children’s birth mom will tell the five grandkids
they don’t have to do what the grandmother says
because she (the grandmother) is not their mom; the
child’s birth mom will tell the child she’s coming
to visit that afternoon, but never shows up; the
children’s parents will threaten to call the public
child serving agency and get the agency to “take”
the kids if the caregivers don’t do what the birth
parents say; the birth parents will refuse to
cooperate with custody papers and, therefore,
necessitate the caregivers hiring an attorney; and,
on and on.
It certainly is true that some birth parents bow
out of the picture and let the relative caregivers
establish a stable home for their children.
But at the very least, most caregivers have stress
connected with the very fact that it is adult
members of their own families who are choosing not
to care properly for the children. And, of
course, the relatives worry about the birth parents’
substance abuse, lack of employment, violence and
all the numerous things that accompany dysfunction.
The Positives of Kinship Caregiving
Given all the above, is there anything positive
about being a kinship family. YES!
No doubt, grandparents and other relatives would
prefer to have the birth parents taking good care of
the children; but, since they are not, the
grandparents often feel they have no other choice
but to step in to do the parenting and it’s not all
bad.
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