Horner, founder of Grandparents As Parents, dies at 68

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 8:44 a.m.

Southern Nevada family rights crusader Jane Horner said in a 2002 Las Vegas Sun story that grandparents who are forced to raise their grandchildren had become "a serious child welfare issue of the 21st century."

Two years earlier, Horner found herself in that position after two of her grandchildren, then ages 3 and 13, were abandoned on her doorstep, forcing her and her husband to raise them on retirees' fixed incomes plus what amounted to about $13 a day in state welfare money.

Horner, the founder of Grandparents As Parents of Southern Nevada who in recent years fought against government belt-tightening cutbacks to her program, died Monday of a heart attack en route to Boulder City Hospital. She was 68.

Services are pending for the longtime Boulder City resident.

In 2001 Horner, a political neophyte, went to Carson City and lobbied legislators to pass the kinship care bill that created a pool of state money to help Nevada's elderly care for grandkids left in their custody.

In a Jan. 28, 2002, Sun story, Horner noted that since 1990, "grandparents raising children has increased 109 percent" in Nevada.

"This is a serious child welfare issue of the 21st century, one that a lot of people don't understand or want to understand or talk about," Horner said.

The 2000 U.S. Census supported Horner's assertion, finding that in 6.2 percent of U.S. families, grandparents were raising their grandchildren -- the third most prevalent method of parenting in the nation, the census said.

Although Horner strived to have every Nevadan raising grandchildren deemed eligible for kinship care assistance, the Legislature eventually passed a bill that limited the assistance -- several hundred dollars a month -- to legal guardians age 62 and older.

The bill covered not only grandparents, but also elderly aunts, uncles and others who were forced to raise their minor relatives.

The kinship care bill went into effect Oct. 1, 2001, and was funded by $800,000 in federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Family grant money. The funding pool grew to more than $2 million a year from that same funding source.

More than 260 Nevada children benefit from the kinship care program. Participating guardians receive about 90 percent of what foster parents get for doing the same job raising strangers' children.

In Horner's case, she went from receiving $383 a month in welfare money to $1,283 a month in Kinship Care funds. However, that benefit eventually was cut by about $400 in the wake of state cutbacks.

Critics of the program said grandparents, without taxpayers helping to foot the bill, should willingly and gladly step in to raise their grandchildren if the natural parents fail in their duties.

"My mother said she was not going to allow the opinions of others to stop her from fighting for what was right," said Ellen Trosper of Boulder City. "She had seen too many grandparents cry after turning their grandchildren over to foster care because they just could not afford to raise them.

"She was fighting for the rights of grandparents and families all over the state -- and all over the United States -- to get a little backup money to help give minor grandchildren a fighting chance at a stable life."

Proponents of Horner's cause contend that the state has saved far more money with the program than it has cost taxpayers because it has kept hundreds of kids out of the foster care program and provided the youths family stability.

Born Jane Isabel Horvath on July 3, 1937, in Lorain, Ohio, she was the oldest of three children of steel mill supervisor Michael Horvath and the former Catherine Marley.

After graduating from Lorain High, Horner carved out a career in the culinary field, working in school cafeterias and being a waitress in restaurants before retiring as a director of sales for a Southern California catering business.

Horner also was for many years a single mom raising four children.

Horner was proud to have lived to see her 18-year-old grandson Christopher, who she raised under the kinship care program, graduate last spring from Boulder City High School, her family said.

In addition to her daughter, Horner is survived by her husband of 21 years, Will Horner of Boulder City,; four sons, Richard Contratto and James Contratto, both of of Las Vegas, Todd Contratto of Bosque Farm, N.M., and Kirk Horner of Escondido, Calif.; a brother, Neil Horvath of Lorain Ohio; a sister, Jean Dahl of Burbank, Calif., and seven grandchildren.