Parenting a second time around.

Dunifon, Rachel

As a faculty member with a research and extension appointment, I seek to use research to inform policies and programs in New York State. Additionally, the real-world experiences I have gained through my work with policy makers and practitioners inform the research I conduct. One area of focus for my research and extension activities is that of grandparent caregivers.

In 2002, 2.3 million children (2 percent of all U.S. children) were being raised by their relatives, with no parent present in their household. Over half of these children were being raised by a grandparent, in what are termed custodial grandparent families. Grandparents serve as primary caregivers for grandchildren whose parents are not able to care for them and child welfare agencies often rely on grandparents to care for children instead of placing them in foster care.

The vast majority of children being raised by their grandparents enter this situation through a private arrangement made within the family, with no formal involvement by social service agencies. Often times these private arrangements are made in times of family crisis. A variety of difficult situations precipitate children leaving their parental home and entering custodial grandparent families, the most common of which are drug and alcohol abuse among the parent(s), parental mental health problems, abuse or neglect, and parental incarceration.

Because children being raised by relatives are not part of the formal child welfare system, they often fall through the cracks, having minimal or no contact with social service agencies, and receiving little or no financial support from the state. Additionally, unlike youth in foster care, youth in custodial grandparent families receive no services designed to assist them in the transition to adulthood and, in fact, lose all eligibility for any type of financial assistance upon reaching the age of 18. This lack of connection to the public welfare and social service system is particularly unfortunate, as research shows that custodial grandparent families have unique needs. In a recent study I conducted in upstate New York, I found that almost half of children being raised by relatives had diagnosed medical conditions, such as asthma or attention-deficit disorder. Additionally, such families are often in precarious financial situations--in the same study, I found that 24 percent relied on emergency food sources such as food pantries and a third had a problem paying their bills.

The Hudson Valley Relatives as Parents Program (RAPP) is designed to address the needs of families in which children are being raised by grandparents or other relatives. Led by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Orange County, and funded by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the program provides a variety of services for relative caregivers, including support groups; parenting classes; recreational events and outings; and activities for children and youth being raised by relatives.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A key component of RAPP is the PASTA (Parenting a Second Time Around) curriculum, which consists of six workshops designed to address the specific needs of relatives raising children, including discipline, rebuilding a family after crisis, legal issues, and caregiver rights. In 2003, PASTA was awarded National First Place for Educational Curriculum Package by the National Extension Association of Family and Consumer Sciences and is offered throughout New York, as well as in 24 other states.

In my current work, I seek to increase our understanding of grandparents raising grandchildren, and to use this information to enhance programs like PASTA. I am taking a multipronged approach to better understanding such families, collecting data through a series of interviews, focus groups, and videotaped interactions between grandparents and the youth they are raising. Our results to date indicate the need for special programs to address the needs of grandparents raising teenagers, including issues such as appropriate discipline and understanding the technology and social habits of today's youth. I am working with policy analysis and management extension associate Kimberly Kopko, along with Cornell Cooperative Extension educators Denyse Variano, Nancy Olsen-Harbich, and Isabelle Jensen, and retired human development faculty member Jennifer Birckmayer, to revise the PASTA curriculum to focus on these issues and conduct a thorough evaluation of it.

Throughout all of this work, I seek to use research to raise our understanding of the unique needs of relative caregivers and to use this information to enhance policies and programs for these families, thereby fulfilling and benefitting from the land-grant, mission of the College of Human Ecology.

Rachel Dunifon is an associate professor in the College of Human Ecology's Department of Policy Analysis and Management.