According to a 2020 report published by grandfamilies.org, more than 35,000 children in West Virginia live in the primary custody of their grandparents (the National Center for the Analysis of Healthcare Data estimated an even higher number — 43,000 — the same year).
Grandparents raising grandchildren sometimes struggle with knowledge, finances and resources to raise their grandchildren for a myriad of reasons beyond the “generation gap” — the disruption in the typical family life cycle, the challenges of 21st century parenting and possible family trauma due to having a child with an addiction and a grandchild exposed to that environment.
Beginning in 2015, the Institute-based West Virginia State University Department of Social Work and WVSU Extension Service have partnered to present, promote and produce the Healthy Grandfamilies Program. The program was launched officially on Oct. 28, 2016, at an informational open house at the Tiskelwah Center on Charleston’s West Side.
“Over half of the kids in West Virginia live with someone other than their biological parents,” Healthy Grandfamilies Director Melissa Lilly said. “The best case scenario is that they’re being raised by their grandparents, because they love them more or treat them better.
“Grandparents are sometimes decades away from raising children and need some extra help to take on this challenge,” she added.
The free initiative contains a series of nine, facilitated discussion groups held with grandparents who are raising one or more grandchildren, supported with social work services for assessment, advocacy and follow-up needs. The West Virginia State Legislature, grants and contributions from several health insurance companies throughout the state fund the program.
Volunteer professionals and paraprofessionals teach the Healthy Grandfamilies informational sessions. (Child care for attendees and refreshments are provided at every session.)
Discussion topics include:
-- Parenting in the 21st Century
-- Family Relationships: A New Dynamic
-- Communication: When No One Talks and Everyone Texts
-- Technology and Social Media: The Dangers, Pitfalls and Plusses
-- Nutrition: Balancing Diets When Everyone is “On the Go”
-- Legal Issues and Documents
-- Health Literacy and Self-Care
-- Healthy Lifestyles and Stress Management: How to Manage Your Stress — and the Stress of Your Grandchildren
-- Navigating the Public School System.
Upon completing the session series, participants are provided with three months of free follow-up services with a social worker, such as:
-- Help locating community resources
-- Confidential assistance in meeting the unique needs of the family situation
-- Advocacy services as needed.
Lilly said grandparents need to know they aren’t in it alone. “We give them education, and advocate for them if they need a voice to help with legal issues or schools,” she said. “We can connect them with other people in the same situation who can offer peer-to-peer support.”
Lilly said Healthy Grandfamilies can also help provide grandparents with direct benefits, including clothing and food assistance, especially if the grandchildren qualify under the federal definition of homelessness. “We can help with a lot of things for these children. In trying to change the quality of life of the family, they might need additional tools and resources and that’s where we come in.”
WVSU also provides support to county coalitions in locating resources, identifying potential discussion group speakers, securing program funding, and facilitating ongoing training if needed. Lilly became director of Healthy Grandfamilies in November 2021, having worked previously as a Legal Aid of West Virginia attorney with the program during its pilot years.
“We’ve expanded and we’re now statewide,” she said. “We’re just a small staff of three here in Institute, but we now have a county coordinator in all 55 counties. Most of the time it’s someone employed by the county school system or with a social service, foster agency or health department. They really take the lead, so we encourage the families to initially to get involved at the local level.”
Lilly cited as an example a call she received a couple of days before from a grandparent in Marlinton. “Immediately, I let them know we’re far away in Institute,” she said, “but we have a local group in Pocahontas County.”
The grandparent had learned of Healthy Grandfamilies from a booth the agency staffed at the West Virginia State Fair. “How grandparents are finding out about us is usually on a local level,” Lilly explained. “We try to make the local level that first point of contact. In Kanawha County, we try to move around the county a little bit."
Lilly said they try to host grandparents at places where they are comfortable attending, such as schools. They’ve gone to Cedar Grove Elementary, Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary, the Pre-K office, and West Side Middle School. “We try to do at least one in the eastern half of the county and one in Charleston or western Kanawha County once a year.”
Lilly said another information session for Kanawha families is being organized for the end of September. “We’re enrolling right now. I’ve got a stack of referral forms that Kanawha County schools have sent me, and other people have contacted us about it through a bunch of back-to-school events we did recently to give out our information.”
She said organizers are going to determine where the largest group requesting the program resides before determining the Kanawha date, time and location. Applications and more details are available by calling 304-204-4361.
Grand Conferences
The inaugural Healthy Grandfamilies Grand Conference took place in Bridgeport Aug. 8-9, 2022. “Our main goal was to unite county leaders throughout the state for the first time and introduce them to new Healthy Grandfamilies extension staff and updated training requirements,” Lilly said.
The 2023 Grand Conference was held Aug. 21 and 22, also at the Bridgeport Conference Center. It featured opening remarks from WVSU President Ericke S. Cage and financial reporting from the county coalitions during the first day.
“Our budget has grown tremendously thanks to the West Virginia Legislature,” Lilly said. “It was $100,000 a year for several years. Now it’s approximately $800,000 a year. We try to spend that by sending it directly back to the counties with quarterly disbursements to run their programs and offer support.
“Some are getting up to $10,000 a year from us. We have to run it sort of like a mini-grant program; they have to show us what they’re doing with the funding and provide receipts showing us what they’re using it for ... so that when we get audited we have backup on what we sent to them.”
Five of 20 Healthy Granfamilies community partners offered updates during the conference: findhelpWV, Legal Aid of West Virginia, the West Virginia Drug Intervention Institute, Think Kids, and KVC Behavioral HealthCare. Dr. Shannon Smith, a Huntington pediatrician, presented the keynote address.
Grandparents’ response and feedback
Lilly said grandparents have praised the program almost unilaterally.
“One woman said she hadn’t raised children in over 30 years. She said, ‘We planned to be retired and living in Florida, and now we’re starting over with two children and we sort of resent having to do it. We started talking to other grandparents and it made us feel better prepared.’ You know, there’s always someone who’s worse off than you and they’ve figured out they have resources available to them and were able to take these children in.”
More information regarding contacting county coalitions for assistance or attending the upcoming Kanawha County Healthy Grandfamilies information session is available by calling 304-204-4631 or visiting healthygrandfamilies.com.
Beginning in 2015, the Institute-based West Virginia State University Department of Social Work and WVSU Extension Service have partnered to present, promote and produce the Healthy Grandfamilies Program. The program was launched officially on Oct. 28, 2016, at an informational open house at the Tiskelwah Center on Charleston’s West Side.
“Over half of the kids in West Virginia live with someone other than their biological parents,” Healthy Grandfamilies Director Melissa Lilly said. “The best case scenario is that they’re being raised by their grandparents, because they love them more or treat them better.
“Grandparents are sometimes decades away from raising children and need some extra help to take on this challenge,” she added.
The free initiative contains a series of nine, facilitated discussion groups held with grandparents who are raising one or more grandchildren, supported with social work services for assessment, advocacy and follow-up needs. The West Virginia State Legislature, grants and contributions from several health insurance companies throughout the state fund the program.
Volunteer professionals and paraprofessionals teach the Healthy Grandfamilies informational sessions. (Child care for attendees and refreshments are provided at every session.)
Discussion topics include:
-- Parenting in the 21st Century
-- Family Relationships: A New Dynamic
-- Communication: When No One Talks and Everyone Texts
-- Technology and Social Media: The Dangers, Pitfalls and Plusses
-- Nutrition: Balancing Diets When Everyone is “On the Go”
-- Legal Issues and Documents
-- Health Literacy and Self-Care
-- Healthy Lifestyles and Stress Management: How to Manage Your Stress — and the Stress of Your Grandchildren
-- Navigating the Public School System.
Upon completing the session series, participants are provided with three months of free follow-up services with a social worker, such as:
-- Help locating community resources
-- Confidential assistance in meeting the unique needs of the family situation
-- Advocacy services as needed.
Lilly said grandparents need to know they aren’t in it alone. “We give them education, and advocate for them if they need a voice to help with legal issues or schools,” she said. “We can connect them with other people in the same situation who can offer peer-to-peer support.”
Lilly said Healthy Grandfamilies can also help provide grandparents with direct benefits, including clothing and food assistance, especially if the grandchildren qualify under the federal definition of homelessness. “We can help with a lot of things for these children. In trying to change the quality of life of the family, they might need additional tools and resources and that’s where we come in.”
WVSU also provides support to county coalitions in locating resources, identifying potential discussion group speakers, securing program funding, and facilitating ongoing training if needed. Lilly became director of Healthy Grandfamilies in November 2021, having worked previously as a Legal Aid of West Virginia attorney with the program during its pilot years.
“We’ve expanded and we’re now statewide,” she said. “We’re just a small staff of three here in Institute, but we now have a county coordinator in all 55 counties. Most of the time it’s someone employed by the county school system or with a social service, foster agency or health department. They really take the lead, so we encourage the families to initially to get involved at the local level.”
Lilly cited as an example a call she received a couple of days before from a grandparent in Marlinton. “Immediately, I let them know we’re far away in Institute,” she said, “but we have a local group in Pocahontas County.”
The grandparent had learned of Healthy Grandfamilies from a booth the agency staffed at the West Virginia State Fair. “How grandparents are finding out about us is usually on a local level,” Lilly explained. “We try to make the local level that first point of contact. In Kanawha County, we try to move around the county a little bit."
Lilly said they try to host grandparents at places where they are comfortable attending, such as schools. They’ve gone to Cedar Grove Elementary, Mary C. Snow West Side Elementary, the Pre-K office, and West Side Middle School. “We try to do at least one in the eastern half of the county and one in Charleston or western Kanawha County once a year.”
Lilly said another information session for Kanawha families is being organized for the end of September. “We’re enrolling right now. I’ve got a stack of referral forms that Kanawha County schools have sent me, and other people have contacted us about it through a bunch of back-to-school events we did recently to give out our information.”
She said organizers are going to determine where the largest group requesting the program resides before determining the Kanawha date, time and location. Applications and more details are available by calling 304-204-4361.
Grand Conferences
The inaugural Healthy Grandfamilies Grand Conference took place in Bridgeport Aug. 8-9, 2022. “Our main goal was to unite county leaders throughout the state for the first time and introduce them to new Healthy Grandfamilies extension staff and updated training requirements,” Lilly said.
The 2023 Grand Conference was held Aug. 21 and 22, also at the Bridgeport Conference Center. It featured opening remarks from WVSU President Ericke S. Cage and financial reporting from the county coalitions during the first day.
“Our budget has grown tremendously thanks to the West Virginia Legislature,” Lilly said. “It was $100,000 a year for several years. Now it’s approximately $800,000 a year. We try to spend that by sending it directly back to the counties with quarterly disbursements to run their programs and offer support.
“Some are getting up to $10,000 a year from us. We have to run it sort of like a mini-grant program; they have to show us what they’re doing with the funding and provide receipts showing us what they’re using it for ... so that when we get audited we have backup on what we sent to them.”
Five of 20 Healthy Granfamilies community partners offered updates during the conference: findhelpWV, Legal Aid of West Virginia, the West Virginia Drug Intervention Institute, Think Kids, and KVC Behavioral HealthCare. Dr. Shannon Smith, a Huntington pediatrician, presented the keynote address.
Grandparents’ response and feedback
Lilly said grandparents have praised the program almost unilaterally.
“One woman said she hadn’t raised children in over 30 years. She said, ‘We planned to be retired and living in Florida, and now we’re starting over with two children and we sort of resent having to do it. We started talking to other grandparents and it made us feel better prepared.’ You know, there’s always someone who’s worse off than you and they’ve figured out they have resources available to them and were able to take these children in.”
More information regarding contacting county coalitions for assistance or attending the upcoming Kanawha County Healthy Grandfamilies information session is available by calling 304-204-4631 or visiting healthygrandfamilies.com.
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