Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Definitions and Terms
• Acronyms

1. Executive Summary
2. Recommendations
3. Background to the project
4. How the information was collected
5. Impacting factors
6. What the grandparents said
7. The grandchildren's voices
8. Child protection
9. How do they cope?
10. Key finding & Recommendations

• References

Acknowledgements

The heroes of these stories, and of this project, are the many Australian grandparents who are raising their grandchildren. No one knows how many of you there are, but everyone reading these stories will know of your courage and love, and we hope they will heed your pleas for help and understanding.

To all the grandparents raising grandchildren who participated in this project, Thank You - for speaking out to tell us about your experiences and what would help you cope better. Your love for your grandchildren, your humour and strength shine through.

And to the wonderful support groups, Thank You - for being there and for helping to organise the workshops and meetings so that grandparents could speak freely in safety and comfort.

To the grandparent representatives and COTA staff from Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australian who helped to plan and carry out this project, and the loose network of researchers, students and State and Commonwealth public servants who supported the work - Thanks for a job well done!

Definitions and Terms

Throughout the project, and in this report, the terms grandparents, grandchildren and parents are used to describe the relationships from the grandparents' perspective.

Child protection authorities in all State have adopted the terms, out-of-home care, foster care and kinship care. Kinship care: means care of children and young people provided by relatives, usually grandparents, but may include close family friends.

In all of these cases, the terms apply only to care for which the State makes a payment to a carer of a child not their own. Care provided for children subject to a Family Court order or by informal arrangement with the parents and/or child protection authority agreement is not included. Therefore these children are not counted in official 'out-ofhome care' statistics.

'Out-of-home care' is defined as out-of-home overnight care for children aged 0-17 years, where the State makes a financial payment. This includes placements with relatives, other than parents, where the State makes a financial payment (regardless of which agency makes a decision on placement). It does not include placements made in disability services, psychiatric services and juvenile justice facilities, or in overnight child care services. It should be noted that children in 'out-of-home care' include children in legal and voluntary placements (that is, children on a legal order and children not on a legal order). [AIHW Child protection Australia 2001-02]

Child protection authorities: those State Government departments or statutory authorities charged under State legislation with the care and protection of children. These are:

• Australian Capital Territory - Department of Education & Community Services
• New South Wales - Department of Community Services
• Northern Territory - Department of Health & Community Services
• Queensland - Department of Families: Youth & Community Care
• South Australia - Department of Human Services: Family and Youth Services
• Tasmania - Department of Health & Human Services
• Victoria - Department of Human Services: Community Care
• Western Australia - Department of Community Development

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Acronyms

These are some of the acronyms used by participants in this project: