Columnist Sandra Thompson: Grandparents need help raising kids

Sandra Thompson

Sunday, Aug. 13, 2000 | 9:12 a.m.

Sandra Thompson is vice president/associate editor of the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4025 or e-mail at thompson@lasvegassun.com.

When faced with a problem, Jane Horner is not one to sit around and say "poor me."

Instead, the 62-year-old Boulder City grandmother researches possible solutions and then charges ahead.

Her latest challenge -- and perhaps the most important of her life -- is fighting for subsidies for grandparents who care for their grandchildren.

"Why not give kids to grandparents and have them in a permanent placement?" asks Horner, who is caring for her 4-year-old granddaughter and 13-year-old grandson.

There aren't enough foster homes, so the kids end up being bounced around the system. And the grandparents, Horner says, are "backed into a corner." That's because they do not get the same amount of subsidies as foster parents, even though they are caring for children who otherwise would be in foster care.

Horner advocates subsidized guardianships and aid for grandparents who care for or adopt their grandchildren. Twenty-five states, including California and Arizona, have some kind of kinship aid program, she says.

This is not about money. It's about what is right and fair. It's about nurturing children whose own parents have failed them, Horner says.

More than 2 million children nationwide are being raised by grandparents or other relatives. In Clark County, Horner says, 400 grandparents are raising their grandchildren.

Earlier this year Horner stepped in when her son and daughter-in-law, plagued by drug and alcohol abuse problems, could not care for their two children.

"The children came to us from CPS (Child Protective Services) with only the clothes on their backs," she says.

Horner welcomed them into a stable, loving environment. "My grandson wants to know if he'll stay here forever," she says.

But she and her 75-year-old husband need financial help to continue caring for them and to keep them from being bounced around the child welfare system.

According to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which mandates that a permanent place be found for children within one year of removal from their home, kinship homes such as Horner's now must be licensed according to the same criteria as non-relatives' homes.

The state Division of Child and Family Services does provide services to children who are a ward of the state and live with a relative. It does not provide services for children who are not wards of the state and are living with relatives. According to a Child Welfare League of America report on Nevada, the latter may receive TANF (welfare) payments.

The CWLA report states that the lack of federal funding to offset the costs for room and board could have a major impact on Clark County since one-half of state placements in Las Vegas are in kinship homes.

"Some relatives only need additional financial support; they don't need other services," says Stuart Fredlund, district office manager with DCFS.

DCFS Administrator Steve Shaw says some TANF funds may be made available to establish kinship care subsidies in Nevada, which Horner has been advocating.

Horner has formed GAPS (Grandparents As Parents Support) and is taking her message to the Legislature on the need for kinship subsidies. She is encouraging grandparents to join the effort (call 293-0890).

While the vast majority of grandparents are nurturing, there are cases where placement with them is not advisable.

An unrelated case before Family Court has some relatives worried. The fate of two young children of a mother, whose parental rights were terminated after it was determined that she was responsible for the death of their sibling, remains up in the air. A judge is expected to rule soon on whether the children stay with the foster family with whom they have bonded over the last three years or be placed with an out-of-state grandmother who has not been a part of their lives. Relatives fear the grandmother will give the children's mother access to them.

Horner admits that some children should not be placed with their grandparents. "It's a fine line," she says, adding that the focus should be on what's best for the children, and the relative care-givers should be checked out just like any other guardian or adoptive family.

The issue, she says, should be stability for the children.