TRIB TOTAL MEDIA SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 2018 · 5
RAISING CHILDREN: TAKE 2
“We want to let people know there
are resources to help,” said L’Tesha
Gamble-Pettis, the vice president for
child and family services at A Second
Chance Inc., or ASCI. “They don’t
have to walk this road alone.”
Grandchildren can end up living
with grandparents for a number of
reasons, including abuse, the death of
a parent, the incarceration of a par-ent
and/or having a parent or par-ents
struggling with drug addiction.
Gamble-Pettis said the opioid crisis
has “definitely” contributed to the
number of cases they see.
Currently ASCI is serving approxi-mately
900 children in about 600
homes in Allegheny County. About
70 percent of those children are with
maternal relatives and 30 percent are
with paternal relatives.
The organization also works in
Philadelphia and totals about 1,800
children in all their locations, plus
those children’s caregivers and birth
parents.
ASCI estimates there are many
other “grandfamilies” and others in
kinship care arrangements that aren’t
going through formal channels.
For any grandparent tasked with the
responsibility of raising grandchil-dren,
either formally or informally,
the concerns can be plenty. There’s
often little, if any, time to prepare for
welcoming children into a home that
most likely isn’t childproof, for start-ers.
There are clothes, beds, linens, fur-niture,
school supplies and possibly
much more to buy, depending on the
age of the child. In addition to hav-ing
more mouths to feed, meals likely
will change, and grandparents will
need to stock up with kid-friendly
foods.
There are extracurriculars to pay for
and transportation to consider. All
these can be worrisome for seniors
on a fixed income.
One way in which the Area Agency
on Aging can help is through finan-cial
support.
“It’s a reimbursement program for
grandparents to get reimbursed for
some of the expenses of raising
Legislation to help grandparents
find important resources, services
In July, President Donald Trump signed
into law the Supporting Grandparents Rais-ing
Grandchildren Act, which was first intro-duced
by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Sen.
Susan Collins (R-Maine) in May 2017.
The legislation will establish a federal
advisory council led by the U.S. Dept. of
Health and Human Services that will help
gather and provide information about where
grandparents can get resources and services.
The House and Senate passed the bill
earlier this year.
A number of prominent senior and chil-dren’s
advocacy groups have backed the leg-islation,
including Generations United, the
American Academy of Pediatrics and AARP.
According to AARP, there are approximately
2.6 million children being raised by grand-parents
or another family member nation-wide,
with that number expected to increase
as the opioid crisis continues.
Once assembled, the council — which
will include grandparents and caregivers,
according to Casey — will have one year to
put together a repository of information that
will be found on a website, a one-stop-shop
of sorts where grandparents can go to find
what’s available to help them in their
situation.
Casey, ranking member of the U.S. Senate
Committee on Aging, hosted a roundtable
discussion about the legislation at A Second
Chance Inc., in Pittsburgh, earlier this year.
According to his office there are more than
100,000 children in Pennsylvania being
raised by grandparents.
BY KAREN PRICE
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