Grandparents' Association
Key Facts
Location
Project Criteria
Contact
Lynn Chesterman
Email
Project funding
£125,000
Funding round
We plan to reach grandparents and other full time kinship carers who are unlikely to be using any other agency for support. Carers, who are acting as parents for the 'second time around', will be encouraged to tackle the emotional and practical barriers they face. We will do this by:
- Providing information and advice.
- Developing Grandparent and Toddler groups. These will provide peer support and networks.
- Setting up a local telephone advice line offering some out of hours support.
- Introducing a telephone befriending service.
- Signposting kinship carers to other local services.
- Arranging social events. Our experience shows kinship carers are socially isolated.
We will host a local conference early in the project conference for beneficiaries and local services to identify, and work out how to meet, the needs of kinship carers. The project will work with a number of local partners, for example those who have identified grandparents raising their grandchildren because of the parents' involvement with drugs and prostitution. Local groups and schools will also be involved along with health visitors, pre-school advisors etc.