Imagine you are approaching or beginning to enjoy your retirement years, when suddenly your life is turned upside down. A family crisis means you must take on the fulltime care and responsibility for your grandchildren and effectively become a ‘parent’ all over again. Cue sleepless nights with young babies and toddlers through to truant rebellious teenagers, plus extreme stress and the challenges associated with parenting children two generations apart from you.

 

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that the State must ensure that children are protected from discrimination of any kind based on their status or that of their caregiver or guardian. Our own laws governing the care and protection of children are founded on the principle that if children can’t be brought up by their parents; as long as it is in their best interests, they should wherever possible remain in the care of their family or whanau group. So often it is the grandparents who step in to care for them because of parental drug abuse, violence, and neglect, and in circumstances where the grandchildren themselves are suffering physically and psychologically and/or with special needs. 

A 2009 survey of our members shows that nearly half are raising up to six grandchildren on a gross household income of less than $31,000 per annum. Some of our grandparents even tell us they are going to bed hungry and foregoing much needed medical care for themselves to support their grandchildren and ensure they are fed.  It is a bitter irony then, that if those thousands of grandchildren were in foster-care they would be eligible for significantly more resources and financial support to cover their medical and therapeutic costs associated with their welfare and recovery.  Yet all the grandparents I have talked to over the past ten years wouldn’t have it any other way.  The love they have for their grandchildren is what keeps them going day after day, year after year providing these children as best they can with the love and the sense of belonging they need in order to have a chance of developing into healthy and functioning members of society.

With nearly 4000 member families and 48 support groups nationwide, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust New Zealand (www.grg.org.nz) has been providing support and advocacy to grandparents in an effort to try to ensure they receive equitable assistance from government agencies, community organisations and service providers.  There is still a long way to go towards getting the support that is needed, but recent changes to the Unsupported Child Benefit allowance has been a welcome improvement for many. We look forward to a time when children placed in grandparent/kin care get the same recognition as to their individual needs as do fostered children.

On the 28th & 29th of October 2009  we are delighted to be hosting the Trust’s very first national conference at the Ellerslie Convention Centre in Auckland during Grandparents Week 2009 at which this issue and many more will be discussed.

The comprehensive two day programme is an important forum for grandparent caregivers as well as representatives of Government, policy advisers, agencies and professionals working at the frontline of child welfare and abuse prevention. Our aim is to educate, inform and raise the profile of the vital role grandparents are playing as fulltime caregivers throughout New Zealand. But more than that, this conference is a fantastic opportunity for all of us, whether or not we are parents or grandparents; to take a good look at how we are parenting and raising the children who will be the parents and grandparents of the future.

Make yourself your favourite brew, sit down and take a few minutes out of your busy day to read through the programme and find out for yourself why this event, with the wonderful speakers involved will make a difference to your personal and/or professional life. 

I personally look forward to meeting you at the conference in October!

Diane Vivian

Founder and National Convenor – Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust NZ