6 · SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 2018 TRIB TOTAL MEDIA
someone else’s children,” said Brenda
Slagle, the agency’s caregiver support co-ordinator.
“If you’re 55 years old or older
and living with and raising children under
18, you can get a care manager to follow
the case, assist in filling out applications,
find social services and resources, have ac-cess
to lists of support groups and respite
care, so basically the care manager creates
an individual plan based on what that
family, in particular, needs.”
There can be many concerns that stretch
beyond the financial.
How will they help with homework,
especially subjects in which teaching
methods have changed dramatically since
the first time some grandparents raised
children? How will they keep children safe
in a technologically advanced world? How
will they find the energy required to keep
up with young kids, a task that can exhaust
parents decades younger?
“When you’re a senior citizen, you have
your own struggles you’re trying to pro-cess,”
Jenkins said. “Getting older goes
with challenges. You don’t sleep as well,
don’t see as well, don’t hear as well. You’re
not as quick walking. They’ll be yards
ahead of you and you’re yelling, ‘Wait a
minute, wait a minute.’ I see that all the
time. I used to tell the kids, ‘Your grand-mother
can’t do that, I can’t run, I can’t
catch you so don’t even try it.’ There are all
these types of things that need to be ad-dressed.”
ASCI provides help with all of these con-cerns,
Gamble-Petit said, and if caregivers
have issues they don’t have an immediate
solution for, they’ll work to find a way to
provide one.
The organization is built on the premise
that children do better when placed with
families, or kinship care, than traditional
foster care.
In the system, grandparents go through
a certification process just as traditional
foster care families do.
They must undergo a physical and an
in-home inspection among other qualifi-cations.
Once the family is certified, they receive
access to financial support, training, twice-monthly
in-home visits with a case worker,
the “Kinship Closet,” where they can get
new and gently-used clothing, educational
support, respite care and special programs
RAISING CHILDREN: TAKE 2
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