THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 6, 1997 TAG: 9701060051
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 147 lines
For Angela Nunez and her grandson, 7-year-old Johnathan Stallings, 1996 was a vagabond year.
So were 1995, '94, '93, '92, '91 and 1990.
She has been on the move since shortly after Johnathan's birth, staying with relatives and friends and, most recently, living in a Virginia Beach shelter.
As 1997 began, Nunez, 60, prepared to move again. It's another temporary solution - another patch on the threadbare life of this skip-a-generation family.
Nunez is one of a rapidly growing number of grandparents nationwide, from all economic strata, caught up in diapering, driving and disciplining. They're raising their grandchildren because their own children can't - or won't.
And government is only beginning to make their lives easier.
If Nunez had been able to collect foster care money instead of welfare payments, she and her grandson might never have become homeless. Foster care payments are considerably higher than welfare payments, according to Marian Davis-Johnson, human services coordinator for the Virginia Department of Social Services.
In Virginia, a foster parent - including a grandparent - receives $524 to $776 a month for two children, depending on their ages, said Davis-Johnson. But when grandparents take custody of grandchildren on their own, comparable welfare payments in, for example, South Hampton Roads cities are $231 a month, she said. Nunez receives that amount because she was found to be needy. Grandparents' incomes are not taken into account when determining eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
Both foster care and welfare payments for parenting grandparents vary widely from state to state. In California, Nunez collected $450 a month in welfare for herself and Johnathan; in Arizona, she got $275.
In Connecticut, a grandparent caring for two grandchildren receives $181 to $196 a month from welfare but would get $1,153 to $2,400 in foster care money.
When it comes to a grandparent making the best financial arrangements for the care of a grandchild, Davis-Johnson said, ``Knowledge is the key.''
About 1.4 million children under 18 lived solely with grandparents in 1995, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure was more than 1 1/2 times the number who did so in 1992, just three years earlier. In contrast, between 1970 and 1992 the number remained fairly steady at just under 1 million, according to census and survey data.
In Virginia, 105,257 grandchildren lived with grandparents in 1990, said Larry Robinson, an economist with the Virginia Employment Commission. Whether that number reflected living arrangements that also included parents was not clear from available data. Survey figures for Virginia for more recent years were unavailable.
Nationally, one unofficial estimate puts the number of grandchildren living with grandparents much higher as 1997 gets under way.
``We have 1 million-plus grandparents raising 3 to 5 million grandkids,'' said Mary Fron, president of Raising Our Children's Kids, a Michigan-based, non-profit advocacy group for custodial grandparents that goes by the acronym R.O.C.K.I.N.G. ``It's a growing problem, and it's not going away.''
Fron said that imprisonment, drug use and unemployment account for most cases in which grandparents take over care of their children's children.
This leap-frog parenting legacy is a bittersweet one, for while there is joy in being fully involved in the life of a grandchild, there also is hardship, financial and otherwise.
Nunez is one for whom parenting the second time around has been especially difficult.
Disabled from arthritis and heart problems, she looks to the new year with hope for a better life for herself and her grandson. Nunez got unofficial word Thursday that she'll be able to collect Supplemental Security Income payments for 1996 and part of 1997 and will then qualify for monthly Social Security checks. She and Johnathan likely won't have to try to live on a $231 welfare check and $190 in food stamps much longer.
Nunez's daughter, Johnathan's mother, has been in a California women's prison since 1993 and won't be released for two more years. But even before she was incarcerated, Nunez's only daughter was so enmeshed in the world of illegal drugs that she was unable to care for her son, Nunez says.
Nunez, who raised her own three children without help from their fathers (one son is in the Navy, and the other is a Los Angeles police officer), thought she was done with parenting chores like potty training and helping with homework. She was looking forward to retirement after a clerical career at a California accounting firm.
About the time Nunez began caring for the infant Johnathan, she lost her job. Her considerable skills had become ``passe,'' she says, because she lacked sufficient knowledge of computer technology. And, she says, the company she worked for became aware of her health problems and decided to fire her.
At first, Nunez collected unemployment, and then, for a time, lived with Johnathan's paternal grandparents in Arizona, working temporary jobs. When Nunez' heart problems worsened, she filed for disability benefits. She's fought a losing battle with Social Security ever since. In 1992, she underwent triple bypass heart surgery. Then, crippling arthritis set in. Today, she is unable to sit or stand for more than two hours at a time and can't lift more than 10 pounds, on doctor's orders.
Several years ago, Nunez moved to Virginia Beach, where she and Johnathan lived with her son and his family.
But that arrangement was ultimately unsuccessful, and, in October, grandmother and grandson took up temporary residence in a Samaritan House shelter. As their first deadline approached for moving out, Nunez made desperate calls to other area shelters, but she found that none had a place for her and her grandson.
Samaritan House extended their stay until after the holidays. With only days left until they were to be out, Nunez got a temporary stay when Alicia and Bob Bobulinski offered her their garage apartment.
For several years, the Virginia Beach couple has provided transitional shelter to homeless people and families one case at a time, and they were struck by Nunez and Johnathan's plight.
So far this school year, Johnathan has attended first grade at three elementary schools. He will soon enter a fourth.
Nunez got legal custody of her grandson in Virginia, a step that was necessary so she could register him in school and seek medical treatment for him. Social service departments in Virginia, as in other states, do not require a relative to have legal custody to apply for welfare on the child's behalf.
Ironically, had Nunez waited until Johnathan became a ward of the state, and had she been designated his foster parent, she would have qualified for foster care money. On the other hand, the child might have been put in a non-relative foster care home. MEMO: [For a related story, see page B3 of The Virginian-Pilot for this
date.] ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
The Virginian-Pilot
Angela Nunez is struggling to raise her grandson, Johnathan
Stallings, 7, on her own. Unemployed and homeless, she has found a
temporary haven with a Virginia Beach couple.
CHILDREN LIVING SOLELY WITH GRANDPARENTS
The Virginian-Pilot
GRAPHIC
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
SOURCE: Census Bureau
MORE RESOURCES
Agencies and support agencies for custodial grandparents include the
American Association of Retired Persons, Grandparent Information
Center, 601 E. St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20049, (202) 434-2296, fax
(202) 434-6474; and R.O.C.K.I.N.G., P.O. Box 96, Niles, Mich. 49120,
(616) 683-9038.
Other resources include ``Kinship Care: A Natural Bridge,'' a book
published by the Washington-based Child Welfare League of America.
KEYWORDS: CUSTODY CAREGIVERS GRANDPARENTS