January 11, 2003
Grandparents with custody are `punished'
Fight continues for benefits and status
Sarah Jane Growe
For those begging for more instalments in the continuing saga of
sole-custody grandparents versus the Ontario government, the fresh flurry
of high-level meetings and rhetoric has changed nothing.
And isn't likely to.
"The hoops these grandparents have to jump through to do the right thing
are profound," said NDP house leader Peter Kormos as he ended his
impassioned entreaty in the Legislature on Dec. 12.
His plea for legal recognition and financial compensation comparable to
foster care for grandparents raising their grandchildren went virtually
unnoticed.
Some members at the late-night session were drunk, and that's what made
the news, rather than what was said. Yes, Brenda Elliott, Ontario's
community, family and social services minister, did finally meet Nov. 26
with Sheila Volchert, president of Grandparenting Again, a two-year-old
support group in St. Catharines that stepped into the political spotlight
last spring.
Volchert, a new breed of grandparent activist who has knocked on Elliott's
door for six months, "ain't no pushover," Kormos, MPP for Niagara Centre,
told the other MPPs.
Elliott, MPP for Guelph-Wellington, was "very interested" in Volchert's
petition for new legal status and better financial support, reports her
policy assistant, Brent Colbert. The petition has drawn more than 1,500
signatures and is supported by the Regional Municipality of Niagara.
But the minister "has not outlined any specific initiatives at this time,"
says Colbert, who was at the meeting and is in charge of reviewing the
file. He can't say with certainty there will be changes.
That's much the same language Elliott's press secretary used four months
ago.
Yes, Ontario Works manager Dominic Spadafora outlined his program at the
group's monthly meeting in St. Catharines on Dec. 4, as requested.
The chair of a Toronto-affiliated support group in Elliot Lake, who is
"tired of just chitchat," travelled 12 hours by bus to get in on the
action.
I wasn't there.
My invitation was rescinded after Volchert's group objected to my quoting
legal and psychiatric experts in November who don't support grandparents'
access to foster care payments, triple the amount available to them from
Ontario Works, and to the legal status that would make their control of
their grandchildren permanent and unassailable.
The ministry will not allow Ontario Works staff to talk with me.
But Volchert and her Brantford counterpart, Carol Weaver, who met with
Ontario Works staff on Dec. 11, say their members were frustrated and
angry both during and after the meetings.
Ontario Works staff lacks the power to make the needed changes, they say.
A ministry spokesperson confirms that to be the case.
And those who do have the power lack the commitment, Weaver says.
That leaves grandparents raising their grandchildren as neither parent nor
grandparent, and living in the worst of both worlds.
The parents who have abandoned these children are not strangers. They can,
and often do, come back and forth into their children's lives — "because
on a whim their natural mother decides, oh well, she's got a few bucks now
to take care of her babies one more time, only to see it collapse after
six months," Kormos says in an interview. Volchert knows two teenaged
grandchildren formally adopted by their grandmother as toddlers who are
now insisting on contacting their addicted mother — the grandmother's
daughter.
Because these grandparents are not strangers, there is also an assumption
they should provide unpaid care. "If the children were in custody of the
family and children's services, foster parents would be paid to care for
them," says Kormos, who remembers the East European grandmother who
nurtured him while his parents held down multiple jobs.
"Grandparents should have access to similar amounts of money. They
shouldn't be punished for voluntarily assuming responsibility for the
children."
That issue was dealt with years ago in an Illinois court that refused to
accept a qualified relative as a paid foster parent. The state ruling was
overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1979.
Ontario grandparents are more often than not overlooked as potential
foster parents because of their age, lawyers say.
And those asked to qualify express distaste for the government-regulated
role.
"These are my grandchildren," says Sylvia Poll, a 57-year-old widow in
Scotland, Ont., who has raised five grandchildren since March, 1998. "I
shouldn't have to make them wards of the court. I should have full say,
with no interference from social workers."
Going through the licensing process for foster parents, to be hired and
fired at the whim of government, wouldn't suit at all, Volchert says.
She's meeting with Spadafora Jan. 23 in the hopes of at least getting a
directory of eligible benefits for grandparents and extended families that
reflects their needs.
Ottawa has promised, again, to come up — this week — with new statistics
on how many of these families there are in Canada.
Meanwhile, if the recent spate of discouraging meetings has accomplished
anything, it's to indicate the need for more creative options.
Some states south of the border have set up multi-tier foster-care
licensing systems setting out less stringent criteria for blood relatives,
says Rochelle Bobroff, senior attorney for the American Association of
Retired Persons.
Joint custody in which the grandparent has control but must report back
regularly to the parents would be another possibility, Kormos suggests.
There is not much point in expecting a lot from the current provincial
government, he says.
"Every signal has been negative. These grandparents just have to keep up
the campaign on as many fronts as possible ... until the next election."
