Grandfamilies: Parenting, Take Two

Oct. 21 -- Carrie Parker never imagined raising children in the twilight of her life.

Parker, a 65-year-old retired social-services worker, had planned to spend these years traveling. But today, she gets no rest.

Nine years ago, her daughter suffered a massive heart attack and died. A few years later, her son-in-law, the daughter's husband, also became ill and died. Parker was left to raise the couple's five children.

"I had to reset my life," she says. "I felt like I had done my job [as a mother], but my job wasn't over."

Parker is part of growing trend: grandparents raising their grandchildren — an estimated 2.1 million children, according to the latest U.S. Census figures. For most of these seniors, there is little other choice. But for a small number of families in Boston, there is a program that helps.

Boston Program Helps for Kids and Grandparents

Parker and her family live in a project called GrandFamilies House. It has room for 26 other families who have similar financial and medical troubles.

Elmer Eubanks, executive director of one of the agencies that runs the home, says the GrandFamilies House helps keep the children out of foster care.

"The kids can't be with their parents anymore, so the grandparents take over," he says. "The house gives them the comfort of living with their family. That's much better than having their lives disrupted and moved, constantly moving to different families."

A team of social-service agencies and government subsidies keep the house running. The YWCA runs the free day-care center in the basement. A local health-services agency gives free counseling upstairs. Another group runs an after-school program using donated computers. And most importantly, the housing authority helps the families with their rent.

Getting the various funding sources together and keeping them in place is logistically difficult. The groups share authority.

Social workers say that's why the home remains the only one of its kind in the country. However, one new project is set to open in Buffalo, N.Y.; another will open in Boston; and 11 other cities are now working through the red tape and trying to open GrandFamilies Houses of their own.