Feature article

Grandparents raising children gather for support

Article and pictures by Tammy Lane
March 20, 2008

  Joe Kurth and his wife have a nontraditional relationship with their 15-year-old grandson. You see, they are raising Jesse, “a wonderful child.”
  Kurth, director of 4-H youth programs at the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, was the keynote speaker Thursday at the sixth annual Bluegrass Region Grandparents and Relatives As Parents Conference.
  “These children we’re raising deserve a chance to live a good life, and we can’t let them down,” he said during the opening plenary session at the Holiday Inn North.
  Among the conference sponsors were the Family Resource Centers at Johnson, Linlee/Meadowthorpe and Deep Springs elementary schools. Leslie Calk, the coordinator at Johnson, has served on the GAP conference planning committee for six years.
  “We have a lot of kids (in Fayette County) whose grandparents have stepped in to fill the gap,” she said. “Essentially, the grandparents have stepped in to play the role the parents were not able to play.”
  Kurth talked freely about the legal and financial hardships of securing permanent custody in Iowa and what he and his wife have learned since Jesse came to live with them 11 years ago.
  “My wife, Marianne, and I are raising Jesse because our daughter is (mentally) impaired and therefore unable to parent,” Kurth explained as he shared their family’s story, noting how important stability is for young children. “We were concerned about Jesse’s life, and we knew he really needed us.”

  Having their daughter acknowledge she needed help was difficult in the beginning, he said, but “she did come to terms and now is 100 percent supportive.”   He described Jesse -- a freshman at Lafayette High School -- as a bright, loving and friendly boy. He refers to the Kurths as his parents.
  “There are far more rewards than challenges in raising Jesse,” Kurth said. “The three of us have a foundation to our relationship that not even an earthquake could shake.”
  Virginia Cash, who is raising three grandchildren (ages 6, 8 and 9), drove more than two hours with a group from Albany in Clinton County to attend the GAP conference.
  “The most rewarding thing is when they come up and put their arms around your neck and say ‘I love you, Granny,’” she said during a break.
  Near the meeting rooms, exhibitors had set up a dozen packed resource tables. Also, area lawyers gave free consultations about guardianship, custody and financial support.
  The workshop leaders included Fayette Family Court judges JoAnn Wise and Lucinda Masterton, and Dr. Otto Kaak of the UK Department of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Social Work. Topics ranged from finding ways to relieve stress and recognizing substance abuse in teenagers to cooking nutritious meals on a budget.

THE BACK STORY   For various reasons, including illness, addictions, incarceration, abandonment and death, more responsibility for raising children is falling on grandparents and other relatives. The phenomenon cuts across ethnic and socioeconomic lines.
  Some 35,000 Kentuckians are raising grandchildren or other relative children, including about 2,000 in Fayette County.
  In Kentucky, more than 57,000 children live in grandparent-led households, according to data gathered by the AARP Foundation and several child-welfare organizations. (That’s nearly 6 percent of all children in the state.) An additional 12,300 kids live with other relatives. For more details, see www.grandfactsheets.org/doc/Kentucky%2007%20New%20Template.pdf.
  Nationally, 4.5 million children under 18 live in grandparent-headed homes; the numbers increased 30 percent from 1990 to 2000.

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