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Grandparents left holding the baby
DRUG and
alcohol misuse results in grandparents bearing the brunt of keeping
families together says a report published by Grandparents plus and
Adfam . These grandparents provide essential love and care for their
grandchildren, but at a high cost to themselves as they often end up
in poverty, ill health and overcrowded housing.
As grandparents step in to keep the family together, they may either
have to give up paid work, start working part-time or struggle to
raise young children on a pension. They get little or no practical
or financial support, and experience the stigma and shame of their
own children being drug and alcohol misusers. At the same time their
own plans for retirement and their social life with friends are
turned upside down as their priorities shift to the grandchildren's
education, development and well-being, and they get to grips with
the schools, technology and new trends in music and fashion.
These families are often forgotten by drug and alcohol agencies
whose main focus is on the needs of drug and alcohol users. With a
few notable exceptions, there is a dearth of support services and
groups for grandparents raising grandchildren, and little advice or
information especially in the field of drugs and alcohol. Whilst
some social services have developed special programmes for families
providing kinship care, many seem too happy to place children with
grandparents and leave them to get on with it.
Diana Whitworth, co-director of Grandparents plus said:- "Too
often we hear about the breakdown of family life; here we have
grandparents prepared to step in when their own children's substance
misuse has resulted in them being unable to care properly for their
grandchildren. It is outrageous that so many of them struggle with
inadequate support; we hope that the government will use this
evidence to strengthen proposals in their Green Paper, Care Matters
, to ensure that grandparent carers receive the recognition and
support they need."
Vivienne Evans, Chief Executive of Adfam, said:- "It isn't all
bad news; we also found some excellent examples of family support
groups and social services which provide specialist help and
assessments for grandparents. Our aim is to draw attention to this
forgotten issue and to encourage the development of more family
support services." |
Voting Website and Parliament Campaign Join Forces to Curb
Government Power...
Votebug.com
has joined forces with Local Works - the campaign for the
Sustainable Communities Bill, to give more power to local
communities. Local Works is a national coalition of 76 charities,
environment groups and community organisations including the Womens'
Institute, Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association and the
National Federation of Sub-Postmasters.. Votebug.com is an easy and
free web tool for communities to take part in local democracy.
Local Works has been building grass-roots support for 3 years and
now aims to push the Sustainable Communities Bill through Parliament
over the next 9 months. The Bill currently has cross party support
from 348 MPs - well over half the House of Commons – and is being
championed by Oliver Letwin MP and Julia Goldsworthy MP.
Votebug.com is a new concept of website which combines the concept
of community chat forums with an online democratic system. Built in
the wake of the Power Inquiry Votebug.com was designed to help
re-engage the public in the democratic process. Votebug.com
members debate local issues in local community forums and emails are
sent local MPs with the results. At the same time members vote for
other people's speeches and elect a community leader to represent
them to a wider regional (and then national) community.
MPs are already showing interest. Steve Pound, MP for Ealing North
on Votebug.com:- "This is a really exciting venture that
allows everyone to experience a little of the reality of politics as
they debate different proposals and justify their case."
When the Sustainable Communities Bill becomes law
Votebug.com will
be a very useful tool for councils to use in the new participation
process that they will be required to engage in with their
communities.
The site has over 1800 registered members and leader of World
Council is currently "Geoffrey", from the UK, with a sleaze
rating of 27%. |
