Across the country, approximately 2.7 million grandparents are raising grandchildren. Children end up in the care of grandparents and other relatives when their parents can’t care for them for any number of reasons, including physical or mental illness, incarceration, drug addiction, job loss, divorce or death. In recent years, the opioid epidemic has robbed many children of their parents, as has COVID-19, with a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Grandparents who take on the care of their grandchildren are playing an essential role — not only for their families, but for society as a whole. Research makes it clear that children fare far better in the care of a grandparent or another relative than they do in foster care. But for many grandparents, if not most, starting over as a primary caregiver is tough, and presents an array of physical, economic and emotional challenges.
The William Penn Foundation just launched an initiative that boosts support for grandparents in its hometown of Philadelphia. In that city, more than 17,000 grandchildren live in homes where grandparents provide their primary care. The foundation will provide $2.8 million in grants to eight organizations that are providing services to “grandfamilies” — families in which grandparents or other older relatives are the primary caregivers for young children.
The William Penn Foundation, created in 1945, was built on the fortune of entrepreneur Otto Haas, who cofounded the chemical company Rohm and Haas. The foundation was originally named for Otto’s wife, Phoebe, one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy. Otto and Phoebe’s sons later renamed the foundation after William Penn, the 17th-century Quaker who founded Philadelphia. The foundation is “dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Greater Philadelphia region,” according to its website, and focuses on three issue areas: Creative Communities, Watershed Protection, and Great Learning.
William Penn has been supporting grandfamilies since 2018 as part of its commitment to increasing educational opportunities for children from low-income families. To date, it hasn’t had a whole lot of company in the philanthropy world. The Eisner Foundation promotes “intergenerational solutions to society’s problems,” and Grantmakers in Aging cites the Brookdale Foundation Group, Casey Family Programs and Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, W.K.Kellogg, and a handful of other funders as organizations that provide support for grandfamilies and kinship care. Given the large numbers of grandparents raising grandchildren and the important role they play, especially during the long tail of COVID, this is an area that could definitely use more philanthropic dollars. (We would love to hear of other funders working in this area. If you know of any, please email me at conniem@insidephilanthropy.com)
Jennifer Stavrakos, interim director of the Great Learning program at the William Penn Foundation, points out that it’s not only philanthropy that is overlooking grandfamilies. “We’ve learned that this is a population that is largely invisible,” she said. “People know they are there, but many organizations don’t offer services that specifically support grandparents; they’re treated like any other parent, but the needs are often very different. I also think that public resources around these systems — whether it’s legal support or foster care — are areas where communities struggle for resources across the board. And grandfamilies are at the nexus of all of these systems that need more investment.” (Be sure to check out Wendy Paris’ recent reporting for IP on how grantmaking for aging is evolving, here and here.)
Stavrakos hopes that William Penn’s new funding will make a difference. “This initiative invests in supportive services that are specifically designed to meet the needs of grandfamilies,” she said when the grants were announced. “Many children benefit from the love, support and stability of their grandparents, relatives or close family friends, but it can be challenging for older caregivers to assume the parenting role, navigate complex systems, and afford the expenses of raising children again.”
Generations united
When the William Penn Foundation first started looking into the issue of grandparents raising grandchildren, foundation staff wanted to understand the scope of the issue in Philadelphia. In 2019, the foundation commissioned Generations United, a research and advocacy organization that supports intergenerational families and intergenerational collaboration, to conduct a landscape analysis.
The resulting report, Grandfamilies of Philadelphia, identified a number of areas where grandparents could use more support. Many grandparents face significant financial and legal challenges; others have trouble accessing services; still others have a hard time helping grandchildren with schoolwork and remote learning. And many grandparents reported that their caretaking duties triggered stress and health problems. But the report also found that despite the challenges, the overall picture is positive: “Grandfamilies have many strengths — they are resourceful, resilient, and find ways to cope with and solve many of the problems they face. Research shows with proper supports, children do better in the care of relatives than non-relatives.”
According to research cited by Generations United, for example, children in grandfamilies have better behavioral and mental health outcomes and are “More likely to report they ‘always felt loved’” than children in nonrelative care. As Generations United Executive Director Donna Butts pointed out when the recent grants were announced, “Kids age out of a system; they never age out of a family.”
The report’s findings helped the foundation chart the best way to assist grandfamilies in Philadelphia. “Our intention was not to do a report for a report’s sake,” Stavrakos said. “We wanted to see if there were things that emerged out of the report that aligned with our strategy so we could make some investments and try to fill gaps or make improvements or increase services, whatever the needs were.”
The result was grants to eight organizations that provide support for grandfamilies — support that includes housing assistance, legal support, case management to connect families to available resources and services, outreach to immigrant families, and access to essential supplies like diapers and baby formula (see a complete list of grantees). The three-year grants will allow the organizations to expand and enhance their programs and services in support of grandfamilies.
Thriving families
One grantee, SeniorLAW Center, provides a wide range of legal services for older Pennsylvanians, including grandfamilies, through its Grandparents Raising Grandchildren project. Heather Kelly, supervising attorney at the organization, says that grandparents often face obstacles when it comes to making medical and education decisions for their grandchildren.
“The problem many grandparents face when they’re in an informal, kinship-care situation is that they don’t necessarily have the legal right to take care of their grandchild the way they would like to,” she said. “Probably one of the more concerning situations is with respect to mental health, because mental health providers absolutely will not provide services to children without either parental authority or a court order. Many of the children we see in these family situations have been through trauma and need mental healthcare, and they can’t get that if the grandparent who’s caring for them doesn’t have custody.”
The funding from William Penn will allow the SeniorLAW Center to expand legal services for grandparents and other relatives raising children. The center also plans to create a fund to cover child care and transportation for grandparents when they need to make court appearances, and to launch a Storytelling Initiative to allow grandparents who are willing to tell their stories.
“My clients, many of them, are caring for these children with such grace and such tenderness; I find myself continuously inspired by their perseverance and focus,” Kelly said. “We want to give them the opportunity to speak for themselves, if they choose to, about their experience. Hopefully, the storytelling campaign will help get the word out that grandparents provide a great contribution and they need our support.”
Jennifer Stavrakos is also inspired by the many grandparents who suddenly find themselves stepping back into a parenting role long after they thought that chapter of their life was over. “It’s easy to take a deficit view of where these families find themselves, because it’s a really challenging situation,” she said. “The grandparents I’ve had the privilege of talking to struggle in this role, but they also have a lot of gratitude for their relationships with their grandchildren and the experiences they get to have. It’s in philanthropy’s best interest — and in the interest of the public systems that interact with these families — to make it easier for children to end up in the care of kin, and to provide resources so grandparents and kids can thrive.”