November 25, 2005
The Chicago Community Trust Announces 2006
Fellowship for Community Leader of Bronzeville
Sabbatical Strengthens Chicago’s Not-for-Profit
Leadership and Cultivates
New Ideas to Benefit the Community.
CHICAGO, November 2005, the Chicago Community Trust named Patricia
Abrams to the 2006 Fellowship for Community Leaders program. She
was one of two leaders chosen for their community leadership skills
and accomplishments as well as their plan to develop and implement
new ideas to help strengthen Chicago.
 “The
Fellowship for Community Leaders program identifies and nurtures
outstanding not-for-for profit and public sector leaders and helps
them to better serve the Chicago metropolitan area” said Terry
Mazany, president and chief executive officer of The Chicago Community
Trust. “The goal is for Fellows to return to their chosen
fields with greater leadership capacity and skills.
Patricia Abrams is executive director of The Renaissance Collaborative,
Inc., a housing and supportive service agency in Chicago’s
historic Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side. During her
fellowship, she will explore the dramatic increase of grandparents
raising grandchildren, as well as the support systems available
to them and the challenges these families face. In addition to researching
current policies and programs, Pat will visit various agencies,
legislative bodies and advocacy groups around the country. Her goal
is to use this information to develop services for the needs of
such families, in Bronzeville and elsewhere in Chicago.
On December 6th, The Renaissance Collaborative, Inc. will sponsor
the University of Illinois’ presentation of the needs assessment
for these families. The presentation is the result of work for two
quarters focusing on grand-families in Bronzeville. To attend the
presentation, please call (773) 924-9270 ext 24 to RSVP.
The Renaissance Collaborative, Inc.: http://www.renaissance-collaborative.org/
###
Grandparents take in their kids' kids
Thousands of children are being raised by caregivers
who are shut out of the aid system
By Johnathon E. Briggs
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 1, 2005
When she's at wit's end, struggling to keep food on the table
for her three grandchildren, a weary Glendora Hearn often asks God,
"Am I best thing for these children?"
The retired Ameritech manager has asked that question since 1997
when she gained guardianship of the children from her daughter,
who had a bipolar disorder and an addiction to crack cocaine.
Legally blind and on a fixed income, Hearn could have let the children
become wards of the state. But she couldn't bear the thought of
them being shifted from home to home. Instead she chose to gut her
retirement savings to pay for clothing, food and other expenses
that seemed to grow as fast as her grandchildren. "It has reduced
me to poverty," said Hearn, 62. "It's OK because I love
them."
But it is not OK with some state legislators and advocates who
believe grandparents like Hearn should be compensated by the state
at the same level paid to foster parents. Such compensation, they
contend, would help ease the financial burdens that plague so-called
"grandfamilies."
In Illinois, one in six grandfamilies lives in poverty, according
to census data analyzed by the Children's Defense Fund.
Like thousands of other grandparents, Hearn is eligible to receive
financial and medical assistance only through a federal-state program,
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, administered by the state
Department of Human Services.
Monthly payment for one child is $107, compared with the $292 to
$470 the state Department of Children and Family Services pays to
foster parents for one child.
State Rep. Lovana "Lu" Jones (D-Chicago) and state Sen.
Jacqueline Collins (D-Chicago) introduced bills that would allow
grandparents who are guardians to receive the same level of state
financial aid as foster parents, regardless of the child's status
as a state ward.
Both bills stalled in the fall veto session, but the legislators
said they plan to re-introduce their measures in January.
"I call them silent saviors. If they weren't taking these
children in, they would be in foster care and it would be billions
of dollars [in expense for the state]," said Barbara Schwartz,
coordinator of the state Department on Aging's Grandparents Raising
Grandchildren Program. "We need to support these families."
Nationally 2.4 million grandparents are responsible for raising
their grandchildren, census figures show. Illinois ranks 5th among
states in the number of grandchildren living in grandparent homes
with 213,465.
In Chicago, there are an estimated 97,000 grandchildren being raised
by 41,000 grandparents. Blacks and Hispanics make up 57 percent
of the caregivers, figures show.
These "skipped-generation" families continue to proliferate
as low-income neighborhoods are torn by drug addiction and incarceration
of parents, AIDS and teen pregnancy.
Help is available through various groups, but kinship care advocates
say it is not enough and often not accessible. For example, the
city Department on Aging receives funding from the National Family
Caregiver Act, but grandparents younger than 60--as black and Hispanic
caregivers often are--do not qualify for assistance because they
are not old enough.
"So many times these families just fall through the cracks,"
Schwartz said. "They just don't fit the criteria."
The way Hearn, a Calumet Park resident, joined the ranks of the
"silent saviors" is typical.
Through the ups and downs of failed relationships, including an
abusive marriage, her only daughter had three children and began
using crack cocaine to the point where she routinely left the kids
alone inside the house she shared with Hearn.
The final straw, Hearn said, came in 1997 when the oldest grandson,
Avery, needed surgery that required parental authorization. With
her daughter nowhere to be found, Hearn tucked her gray hair beneath
a baseball cap and arrived at the hospital pretending to be her.
"That let me know that I couldn't co-parent any longer,"
said Hearn, who is divorced.
Hearn petitioned the court for guardianship, but it was a Pyrrhic
victory. She was cut off from receiving food stamps for the children.
As the children's new guardian, the $1,368 a month Hearn receives
in Social Security disability payments disqualified her for the
stamps.
Hearn also receives $386 a month in Social Security benefits for
her oldest grandson, who survived a life-threatening childhood illness,
and $211 a month and medical assistance for the two other children
through the temporary assistance program.
That brings her monthly income to $1,965 for a household with monthly
expenses of about $2,400. She has drained her retirement savings
to stay afloat.
If she were a licensed foster mother, Hearn would receive about
$1,300 a month in state aid for the children; $876 a month if she
were unlicensed.
She's often a month behind on utility bills. And though she suffers
from high blood pressure, Hearn delays doctor visits because she
can't afford the co-pay.
And then there are the day-to-day realities. There are counseling
appointments for Nathan, 10, who likes math; outbursts of sassiness
from Grace, 14, the track star; and the voracious appetite of Avery,
17, the college-bound football player.
"These kids can wear you out," said Hearn, a devoutly
religious woman who turns to the dog-eared, leather-bound Bible
on her coffee table for strength.
Less obvious is the psychic toll on Hearn: How could her intelligent
daughter succumb to drugs? "I know that I had given her the
best that I could in life, private school and the whole nine yards,"
said Hearn.
Generations United, a Washington, D.C., non-profit group that advocates
for those in Hearn's situation, estimates that such caretakers save
the national foster care system about $6.5 billion annually.
When love proves not enough, some exhausted grandparents send their
grandkids to Mooseheart in Batavia, a boarding school of sorts supported
by the Loyal Order of Moose lodges.
Twenty-five percent of Mooseheart's 225 children come from grandparent-headed
homes, up from just 10 percent five years ago, officials said.
"Believe you me, I have thought, `Lord, I just can't do this
anymore,'" Hearn said. "But I could not live knowing that
my grandchildren were in the [foster] system or separated from their
family. That would not be living to me. They are my babies."
- - -
Help for those raising their grandchildren
AARP Grandparent Information Center: 1-888-687-2277
Chicago Department on Aging: 312-744-4016
ChildServ, Grand Family Support Program: 773-693-0300
Circuit Court of Cook County, The Guardianship Help Desk: 312-603-0135
Diamonds in the Ruff Children's Society: 773-268-1500 ext. 169
GRANDFamilies Program of Chicago: 773-651-8800
Illinois State Department on Aging Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Program: 217-524-5327
Mooseheart Child City and School: 630-906-3631
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