Grandparents Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Coronavirus Threatens Not Only W.Va.'s Elderly, But The Children They Care For

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that older adults and people with underlying chronic health conditions are at increased risk for serious illness from the coronavirus.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, West Virginia has the highest percentage of at-risk adults of any state in the country.

This is one of the reasons Gov. Jim Justice gave at a press conference on March 13, when he announced that schools would close.

“We’re in an older state, and the elderly is where this monster attacks,” Governor Justice warned.

Some grandparents found relief in the Governor’s message because they feared that their grandchildren might unknowingly bring the virus home to them. This is especially meaningful in West Virginia where 29,000 children are being cared for by their grandparents, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count data for 2018. For many of West Virginia’s kids, grandparents are the only caregivers they have.

St. Albans grandmother, Gigi Bays, is raising three young grandchildren. She is busy these days making sure her older two grandsons are doing their schoolwork and that her house is staying clean. As a former pharmacy technician at a hospital, she says she knows how to disinfect.

“Let’s go back to like I’m working in the IV-room mode,” said Bays. “You know where every single thing we touch has to be sterilized.”

Bays, who is 60 years old, is on the cusp of the population that’s most at risk of serious illness from the coronavirus.

This includes people 65 years or older, those living in nursing homes, and those with certain chronic diseases, including lung disease, moderate to severe asthma, and serious heart conditions, among others.

Becoming seriously ill is a common fear among grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, according to Bonnie Dunn, statewide director of Healthy Grandfamilies. Dunn said this is one of the biggest fears grandparents have told her they have.

“If it’s a great-great grandparent, and we had four great-greats in the program over the age of 80 who were raising great-greats under the age of 10, you have to be real about it,” Dunn said. “Life is short at that point.”

The Healthy Grandfamlies program offers support for grandparents, from making contingency plans to dealing with school and technology, and especially at this time, Dunn wants grandparents to know about the program’s resources. She said it’s fortunate the program recently launched statewide.

“There is a structure in place to get help to these families,” Dunn said.

The structure includes a Healthy Grandfamilies program coordinator in every county. Julia Hamilton serves in this role for Monongalia County. She’s ready to answer the call of grandparents who need help.

“The idea of facing the next who knows how long as being the only one who is interacting with your grandkids, I would imagine we might get a phone call or two about that,” Hamilton said.

West Virginia is in its third week with schools and daycares closed. Hamilton said calls last week to the grandparents she’s worked with in Monongalia County found all in good spirits. Hamilton said school personnel are also using at-home meal deliveries as an opportunity to check on families.

Some grandparents continue to work, though, including Anita Dewitt, of Monongalia County, who is caring for three grandchildren. Dewitt works in billing at a hospital. She’s not worried about her own health. But she is worried for her 73-year-old mother-in-law who also lives with them and takes care of the grandchildren while Dewitt and her husband work. They’re taking precautions.

“Showering as soon as we walk in the door, making sure we’re washing our hands as much as we can at work,” Dewitt said. “Not letting anybody out of the house, keeping my mother-in-law in.”

For information on Healthy Grandfamilies visit the program’s website where information about each county’s coordinator is listed. Grandparents seeking resources from the program may also call 211 and tell the operator they are a grandparent who’s raising their grandchildren. The operator will use the caller’s zip code to connect them to the Healthy Grandfamilies coordinator in their county.

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Part 5 – School

In 2016, 40 percent of Lakewood Elementary School students were being raised by a grandparent. That’s a stunning statistic considering that kids being raised by grandparents sometimes struggle with behavioral issues, and behavioral issues can cause problems with academics.

This year, that number dropped to 15 percent, but Lakewood principal Kelly Hayes thinks that’s a temporary dip, with more in the pipeline.

“What we’ve also noticed at Lakewood is our low [socioeconomic] status has grown over the course of these six years by 12 percent, which is huge,” Hayes said.

This low SES status correlates with the rise of grandparents as primary caregivers, since older adults tend to have fixed incomes that aren’t high.

Sara Anderson is a developmental psychologist at West Virginia University. She said research shows poverty is associated with low academic achievement and less access to all kinds of resources.

“So the potential [isn’t there] to put them in private school, for example, save for college, and continually provide those resources,” said Anderson

Despite lack of resources, more than one teacher told me that students being raised by grandparents seem to be doing pretty well.

“Most of the ones with grandparents – I guess it’s like 50-50 – the majority of them actually do better,” said Suzanne Lucas, a second-grade teacher at Lakewood and a grandmother raising two grandchildren. There’s not a whole lot of data on whether the anecdotal evidence Lucas gives is true broadly speaking. Studies looking at the academic impact of grandparents raising grandchildren are more than a decade old. Meanwhile, the sheer number of grandparents raising grandchildren has grown to what WVU’s Anderson calls “unprecedented.”

At Lakewood Elementary, fifth-grade teacher Jessica Blake said sometimes the grandparents are MORE involved than parents because they really want to do right by the kids in their care. And that involvement helps.

“Academically, I mean my grandparents are absolutely wonderful, they want to do everything they can for them,” said Blake. “They want to come to meetings, they show up, they say ‘what can I do to help,’ they want their grandchild to succeed.”

But grandparents do seem to struggle when it comes to behavioral issues that cause a child to act out or to be less attentive.

“Behavioral [issues] seems to be, I think, the biggest thing where I’m seeing it more. Because sometimes the grandparents don’t know how to discipline them,” said Blake.

And when kids act out, their academics suffer.

“Typically, because behavior is linked to academic achievement in most cases, where they aren’t able to pay attention in class, they miss a lot of the curriculum,” said Kelly Hayes.

Hayes said while grandparents are more involved, they are also harder to communicate with through modern means.

“Now we serve all our midterms and reports online, and so oftentimes we have to teach a grandparent how to link into that to see the report online or even communicate with the teacher,” she said.

No matter how technology savvy the grandparents are, though, just navigating the system can be overwhelming. Throughout this series, the chorus I heard over and over again, is “we need more support.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health, Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren – Part One

In 2014, more than a third of all children who were removed from their homes due to parental alcohol and drug use were placed with relatives. In many ways, that’s good news for kids. Research shows that grandfamilies protect against trauma and promote resilience. But the arrangement can also be incredibly difficult for the grandparents themselves – many of whom are older and dealing with their own challenges – especially when it comes to physical health.

“It is hard. The youngest one is Audrey, and when she graduates, I guess I’ll be 67…and every summer I wonder can I keep up with them,” said Kelly George.

Kelly is 55. She said some days are just really exhausting.

“But it’s worth it,” she said. “Because I don’t want them deprived of their childhood because I’m an old mom. And they call me mom. It’s something they chose.”

Kelly worked with kids with behavior disorders for 20 years, but retired early when, about 10 years ago, she and her husband got custody of the two grandchildren from their daughter who is a recovering heroin and methamphetamine addict. The girls are now 10 and 13. Their younger sister, age seven, has also been with Kelly since she was born.

Kelly’s son and his wife are also both in recovery, but are doing well. At one point, though, Kelly had five of her children’s children officially and unofficially under her care.

“At first pills of course, snorting,” she explained. “Then it became oxys and roxys and then it became opanas. And then when they restricted the pills to when they couldn’t shoot them anymore or break them down, that’s when heroin went crazy here.”

Kelly worries about her ability to keep up with “her girls” as she ages. She not only cares for the three grandchildren, (as well as other grandchildren when one is sick or other care is unavailable), but also her husband who she says is “very good with homework” and a great support… but very ill. He was given five years to live in 2005 due to various lung and heart issues.

Shirley Neitch is a geriatrician at Marshall Health. She said most of the grandfamilies she sees are headed up by grandparents in their 50s or 60s like Kelly. But sometimes, great-grandparents are the primary caregivers and could be in their 80s or 90s.

“Well, they have the medical problems that people their age have which tends to be not just one, but multiple problems,” Neitch said. “The most common of which is arthritis. And the more arthritis you get the more difficult it’s likely to be literally to be able to keep up with their grandchild.”

And then, she said, older adults caring for children don’t do as good a job managing their own preventive health care.

“Every dime I have goes on these kids,” Kelly said. “I mean obviously I have a pair of glasses that I need. These are all scratched up, I can hardly see out of them right now. Audrey has new glasses. And I had to take her to Morgantown for a second opinion. That all came out of my pocket. You just do what you can to the best of your ability.”

As hard as it is on the grandparents, pediatrician James Bailes said the arrangement can be really beneficial for the kids.

“If you look at the alternatives, placing a kid in foster care or being in a situation where the parents are abusing drugs or financially can’t support the kids, it’s much better for the kids to be in a stable situation IF the grandparents can physically do it,” he said.

Kelly agrees. She said when the girls first came to her home they had problems with anger, eating habits and anxiety. During a recent visit to the George home, though, the girls happily babbled about their school day, scavenged for snacks and pet the dogs – like any other children their age would do.

“If Josh and Jennifer, or God forbid, my daughter, relapses, I’m going to beg someone in my family to do it because I just don’t think I can do it,” Kelly said. “I don’t think I can do it anymore. I don’t think I could take on a baby right now.”

Kelly said it’s not just the physical aspect for her, although that is a big concern, but also the mental toll it takes on her family.

“I’m physically exhausted, I’m mentally exhausted.”

When asked – how did all this happen? How did addiction become such a problem in her family? Kelly doesn’t have an answer. Like many – she wishes she knew. “Addiction has no boundaries,” she said. “If you think you’re exempt and your family is exempt, you’ll be wrong because addiction comes from good and bad homes.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren – An Interview

As the opioid crisis continues to impact Appalachia, children are being left behind. This morning we have the first of a series of stories about grandparents who take on the role of primary caregiver for their grandchildren. To begin the series, health reporter Kara Lofton talks with professor Megan Dolbin-MacNab – a researcher at Virginia Tech who is studying grandparent headed families – about the health impacts of this arrangement.

This is the first installment in a series that will continue over the next month or so, exploring the health impacts of grandparents raising grandchildren in West Virginia.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine.