As a parent when something was wrong with my children I took the blame because I had the responsibility to make sure that they were ok. When our daughter got pregnant in spite of all of the education and sexual health talks I felt as though I dropped the ball. I was hypersensitive when people asked how she was doing in the pregnancy so much so that people thought I hated them. I did not hate them but I hated the situation our family was thrown into by our daughter and now we had to prepare for a child we were not ready to care for or meet. My first grandson came and we cared for him until my daughter decided that she no longer wanted to live with us. My grandson would return to our home at 3 months of age and left again at 6 months of age. After that we loved him from afar and spoke to him when allowed. Then along came our second grandson. Life seemed to be going well for our daughter and her family from our outside view. We had no idea how wrong we were until we received an email from our daughter on a Saturday in April 2014.
Our grandsons were removed from their daycare center and placed into state custody. So many questions came and no answers came from our daughter. How could this happen? Why were our grandsons taken? Where are our grandsons now? When can we see our grandsons? We asked our daughter for a contact person and reluctantly she gave us the information. So many unanswered questions and worrying about how our grandsons were feeling and if they were ok. Monday morning I received a call from a state worker. She informed me that our grandsons were fine but we could not see them since we were not their parents. Then she asked if we wanted to care for our grandsons. Such a simple question and yet the answer was difficult. We had been on this road before and the end result was painful. Did we really want to do this again? After much thought we decided that we would be there for our grandsons. It was that decision that opened the door to the world of kinship foster care for our grandsons. We thought all we had to do was to ensure that our grandsons were clean, safe, and happy. What we did not know was that our lives would not be the same however the change that was coming would be the best thing for everyone involved.
Before our grandsons could come to live with us we had to have background checks done to ensure that our home was a safe place for our grandsons. This process took 2 weeks. When our grandsons arrived we were happy and excited to see them but had nothing in place for them. We got supplies for them and everything was great and we lived happily ever after right? Wrong. We had to do a parent visit one day after the boys arrived. The boys had appointments set up prior to getting to our home and we had to take them to those appointments. They also had in home assessments that were scheduled. Our home once a peaceful place now had become a loud people frequenting place. What had we done to our home-life by saying yes we would be responsible for our grandsons?
One of our home visitors presented us with a folder full of resources for kinship foster parents and the request for us to become licensed kinship foster parents. We said we would think about it. We went from thinking about it to attending orientation to attending foster care licensing classes. We graduated on August 14, 2014. One thing we noticed about our class is that they were quite a few kinship foster care families in our class. Many were grandparents like us.
We became grandparents at the ages of 38 & 39. We have friends that are grandparents as well. A few of them have even adopted their grandchildren. There seemed to be a trend happening with becoming a grandparent at a young age but also becoming a parent to your grandchild also. Young grandparents needed help. They had no idea of any resources that could be available to them and they were in need of help. So were created Young grandparents Observing Understanding Nurturing Grandchildren (Y.O.U.N.G.) project. The Y.O.U.N.G. project is focuses on these areas: Decision to raise grandchildren,Kinship Foster Care, Grandparent Stipend, Foster Care Licensing, and Adoption vs. Guardianship. If you or someone you know could use the help of Y.O.U.N.G. project or any of the Henderson-Hughes Health Partners (H3P) services please reach out to us at hendersonhugheshealthpartners@gmail.com or call us at (623) 282-4214.
