They Call Me Momma:
Relatives Raising Children

Part 4

Aired September 24, 2001

One of the grim realities of the terrorist attacks on America is not only the thousands killed but also the number of children who will be orphaned as a result. Many will join the nearly four million children in the Unites States who already will grow up in a grandparent-headed household. The latest U.S. Census figures show approximately 7% of children in Ohio are living with relatives other than their parents. As 90.3 WCPN®'s Renita Jablonski reports in the next edition of our series on kinship care, these kids often face of series of unique challenges.

Renita Jablonski–Ann is a 63-year-old volunteer at the food bank at St. Martin De Porres Family Center on Cleveland's east side. After a day's work, she takes a moment to relax, sitting next to shelves of food, the quiet hum of the food bank's refrigerator in the background.

Ann–It's just a relief. You come here you get a relief. My nerves are so shot.

RJ–Ann has been raising her grandson since he was nine days old. He's 17 now and Ann says he's still battling with issues he had to deal with since he was a young child.

Ann–He's doing, I'll say pretty good but he still have a lot of issues that he has to work through, and he needs the therapist. He has a therapist, we had therapy last night.

RJ–Emily Edwards runs Women's Re-Entry Resource Network, a program that provides a wide range of services to incarcerated women and those that had been incarcerated. Edwards says one of the agency's most important services is counseling the children of incarcerated women, many of which end up in kinship care situations.

Emily Edwards–They have, depending on their developmental level, can have a range of traumatic effects, things that are related to behavior, related to their mood, mental health problems, self-esteem problems.

RJ–Ann started raising her grandson after her son asked her to help, saying he was unable to raise the baby on his own. The child's mother is a drug addict, and also said she could not deal with the responsibility.

Ann–She didn't come around for five years. Five years, and then she showed up and promised him a whole lot of good things and came with zero, or didn't come. She didn't come.

RJ–Emily Edwards says whether it's substance abuse or incarceration, abandoned children often battle the same types of issues. She says trauma to the child may begin to manifest well before an actual abandonment.

EE–The children may have been living already in a compromised environment emotionally and in terms of stability. If their was drug use or domestic violence going on but they had a bond with their mother, they were with their mother, and so then to suffer this trauma and to not get the supports and to not have people talking about it, what we often find is that people aren't talking to these children about what it's like for them, teaching them how to cope with it.

RJ–Marsha Blanks is director at St. Martin De Porres Family Center where Ann volunteers. Blanks has a close relationship with Ann and her grandson and several other kin families. She says another challenge is getting kids to accept new family lines.

Marsha Blanks–In some instances you have the parent still having contact with that child and how do you change that relationship where I've got to pay attention to grandma, I'm not paying attention to you as the mother. So you have many different family dynamics going on and children need clear cut ways of doing things.

I can't make your mother be your mother. I can only, and he'll say, "Well you my momma." I'm your grandmother, I'm going to always be your grandmother, I'm not going to try to take your mother's place.

RJ–She says while relative caregivers are learning to cope with their new roles as parents, the children in these situations are also doing the same. When a relative needs to take over as mom or dad, it may leave a child feeling ostracized and different from other kids.

MB–One of the other things that kids will say, "I don't want grandma to go with me to this event. This is mother, daddy day, or this is mother's day." You know when you bring your kids to work with you? I have no one to take you know, grandma's retired, nobody takes me to their job.

RJ–A new study by Cleveland State University's Urban Child Research Center shows kids in kinship care may not only suffer a number of mental woes, but increased physical ailments as well. Professor Wornie Reed conducted the survey which interviewed 236 kinship care families in Cuyahoga County.

Wornie Reed–We know that asthma is a serious problem and an increasing problem for children in urban areas however, for the children in kinship care families some 20% had diagnosed asthma. That's about four times the rate in the country in the general population of children.

RJ–Reed says one explanation for this phenomenon is that asthma is often set off by some kind of trigger. He says research shows psycho-emotional problems can spark the disease. Ann's grandson suffers from asthma, as well as Attention Deficit Disorder. Reed says the number of kids with A.D.D. are also considerably higher for those in kin care.

WR–While the national rate of Attention Deficit Disorder among children seems to raise between three and five percent among these children we are talking about somewhere between 18-20% have Attention Deficit Disorder.

RJ–Reed says while the study sampled families across the income spectrum, the report showed most are disproportionately low-income.

WR–Something close to 50% of these families have a total family income of less than $15,000. That's the situation.

RJ–And when that's the situation, it makes for a much harder time in getting kinship care children the services they need. Both Marsha Blanks and Emily Edwards say for this reason it's necessary for social service agencies to be more aware of kinship care as an issue.

MB–There has to be the ability for these kids to have after-school programming, tutoring, they need to be able to go to camp just like every other child has an opportunity to go to camp. They need to be able to have socialization with their own peers and they also need opportunities to talk to other children who are just like them, who are living in relative situations that may be similar to their own so that they know they're not the only child on earth that's been raised by a grandparent.

EE–People are getting arrested in front of their children, taken away, and there's not, you know, right then the ideal thing would be to have a back up plan in place, would be to have someone who would move right in to address the needs of the children on through the sentencing, the court phase, and the incarceration phase.

RJ–Edwards says there needs to be more advocacy on behalf of children to make such reforms in the judicial system. In the meantime, experts agree that social service agencies, as well as schools and families need to be more educated about what children in kinship care and foster situations are dealing with. And perhaps the best way to find out is by going to the heart of the matter - by listening and talking to the children.