This manual is a 14-session workshop designed to help grandparents who are raising their grandchildren alone. Group leaders can revise and expand upon the themes presented here to fit the needs of their particular work groups. Some of the main issues that are explored are: useful tips for grandparents on how to communicate effectively with their grandchildren on all topics ranging from drugs and sex, to sexually transmitted diseases; helping them learn how to deal with loss and abandonment issues; helping them develop and maintain self-esteem; dealing with special behavior problems; and appropriate ways of instilling and maintaining rules in the home. Designed to complement To Grandmother's House We Go and Stay, it is very reader-friendly and easy to understand, and can be read by anyone who has assumed a parenting role of any sort and is interested in raising a happy and healthy child.

Grandparents have long played important roles in the lives of their adult children and their grandchildren in our own as well as in many other cultures. Yet it has only been in the last 3 or 4 decades that grandparents have received the kind of academic scrutiny that other family members--especially mothers--have been receiving a century or more. This groundbreaking collection has targeted the essence of what occurs in the context of grandparents' efforts at parenting their grandchildren as well as the nature of these interactions. Indeed, grandparent's views on the adequacy of their parenting skills and the nature of their relationships with their grandchildren are at the heart of many of the difficulties and satisfactions associated with the resumption of the parenting role in middle and later life, and are of central importance in the lives and well-being of both custodial grandparents and their grandchildren. The volume, which will be of vital interest to family counselors, mental health practitioners, educators, school counselors, social workers, psychologists, and social service providers, approaches this issue from novel theoretical perspectives, presents new empirical data, and provides valuable suggestions for therapists who are treating grandparent-grandchild dyads. It is methodologically diverse, relying upon case studies, empirical findings, and national datasets. Additionally, it incorporates longitudinal work, which has been absent in research with grandparent caregivers to date. Most importantly, it defines new areas of understanding of custodial grandparents that are relevant to both researchers and practitioners, e.g., dealing with grief and loss, a focus on grandchildren, the interactional style of caregiving, parenting education, intergenerational ambivalence, and therefore, should provide fertile ground for work regarding these issues which are so central to the lives of custodial grandparents and their grandchildren. Highlighted coverage includes: Intergenerational relationships/intergenerational transmission of values and their implications for parenting among custodial grandparents the adjustments custodial grandchildren must make in the school system, viewed from the perspective of school personnel (an assistant principal and school counselor) the experiences/perceptions of adult children raised by their grandparents- impact on relationships with grandparents and the parenting of their own children the role of the adult parent in the context of grandparents raising grandchildren Each of these chapters will be written from an applied, practitioner perspective and stress the clinical implications of each issue.

An understudied aspect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the creation of hundreds of thousands of grandparent-headed households that have become home to children bereft of one or both of their parents. Such "skip-generation parenting" presents a host of challenges to the families involved and the social programs designed to assist them. Despite this unprecedented caregiving responsibility, older surrogate parents remain relatively invisible, hidden in the shadows of HIV care and the demands of raising a child. The primary goal of Invisible Caregivers is to generate, support, and guide program and policy initiatives designed to meet the needs of elder surrogates and their families. Most social service programs are not able to identify the needs of older surrogates, often because these surrogate parents in HIV-infected families are reluctant to make their needs known for fear of social stigma or possible reductions of benefits. Multiple systemic barriers to case management and other services also frustrate attempts to bring available resources to elder caregivers. These barriers include professional ignorance or denial that HIV affects surrogates, eligibility restrictions through CARE, limited funding and age restriction on OAA, and a fragmented health and human service system. Because the issues facing elder caregivers are many and varied, this collection covers a host of issues: community health, aging, HIV services, child welfare, education, public policy, and mental health.

"It is through the expertise of an impressive team of psychologists, social workers, nurses, as well as lawyers and sociologists, that Cox is able to explore the grandparent-grandchild relationship and its intricacies. Lack of preparation, social isolation, psychological and emotional stress, and financial strain all contribute to the myriad of issues involved in this new wrinkle in the American family."--BOOK JACKET.

Building community and empowering partnerships Empowering Family-Teacher Partnerships: Building Connections Within Diverse Communities prepares students to work collaboratively with families and community professionals in support of children′s early and middle childhood education and development. Students are invited to develop a personal philosophy of family involvement to guide their work with families and to join a community of learners in relying upon their collective insights and problem-solving skills to address family involvement challenges.

Inspire the next generation of gerontological social workers The growing number of people over the age of 65 in the United States has increased the demand for social workers who are trained to work with the elderly—a demand that’s in danger of not being met. Fostering Social Work Gerontology Competence presents innovative techniques and strategies to help educators infuse aging content into their graduate and undergraduate curriculums in an effort to produce a new generation of social work practitioners who are up to the task of working with an older population. Recent surveys show that there has been a decline in the number of aging specialties and courses offered by schools of social work. Fostering Social Work Gerontology Competence offers a renewed focus on the promotion of gerontological social work education, presenting papers that grew out of the first National Gerontological Social Work Conference (NGSWC), held in 2003. This unique book is invaluable to anyone who educates future social workers, leads staff training sessions, and/or teaches continuing education courses on aging. Leading gerontologists examine teaching research, community collaboration, and social work competencies, while focusing on special populations and issues including end-of-life care, elder abuse, grief counseling, cultural diversity, cultural competence, and the effects of spirituality and social support on the well being of the elderly. Fostering Social Work Gerontology Competence examines: curricular and organizational change developing intergenerational projects involving older persons in the educational process uniting field practice with theory strategies to promote student interest identifying geriatric competencies intergenerational service learning developing an aging prepared community emerging trends in aging and health care end-of-life care and death education environmental issues affecting elder abuse victims mental health services for older persons in rural communities kinship care and much more Fostering Social Work Gerontology Competence is a vital resource for social work educators and practitioners, gerontology educators and practitioners, and students.

Gough, Feehan, and Lyons have taken everything learned from their research on developing GrandFamily Resource Collections and leading grandfamily programming in several states and put it in this easy to use guide. They share the successes and failures of existing programs so other librarians can hit the ground running rather than trudge through a time-consuming and costly period of trial-and-error. It’s a lot more efficient to learn from someone else’s mistakes than to make your own. The target population, grandfamilies, and most specifically, grandparents raising grandchildren have become a statistically-significant group worthy of attention in many communities but library practitioners may not have explored further due to a lack of resources and money. Special features include: List of Web resources (government agencies, support groups, etc.) List of grants and funding opportunities Sample grant applications List of possible community partners for the library Sample surveys or some tactic for getting to know the needs of one’s target population Sample marketing plans Sample promotional materials Sample activity sheets Sample release forms, etc. With this practical and comprehensive guide, your library will be ready to jumpstart or easily expand a stellar program for the grandfamilies in your community.

The 18 papers of this collection on grandparents who raise their grandchildren are grouped into the broad categories of theory, practical applications, and empirical studies. Individual topics include case studies, intervention research, support groups, cross-discipline approaches to establishing caregiving guidelines, the psychological adaptation of grandchildren, building parenting skills, and grandparent caregivers of children with developmental disabilities. The contributors teach psychology, social work, child development, and gerontology at universities in the US.

Many people in the United States are poor, lead marginal lives, and need jobs as well as basic services such as education, medical care, and housing. Multitudes in other parts of the world, in addition to being poor, are jailed, tortured, and killed for being members of the wrong ethnic group or expressing political opinions. Those who argue for empowerment claim it is a magic bullet. It can liberate the oppressed, largely through self-organization, self-motivation, self-invention, and even self-clarity. William M. Epstein sees contemporary empowerment practice in the United States as a civic church of national values, one better in performing its ceremonial role than god-based houses of worship. By itself, empowerment is not worth the effort of commentary, since it achieves none of its goals and has not even generated a respectable critical literature. But Epstein argues that empowerment practice and American social welfare both embody prescriptive cultural preferences. Like art and music, empowerment opens windows into deeper social meaning. The social sciences have carved out roles for themselves by looking for simple remedies, ones that are inexpensive and compatible with contemporary social arrangements. Epstein shows that those in social work practices have not only deluded themselves into thinking that these services have real instrumental value, but really operate at cross-purposes. This accessible work will attract critical attention among these professional groups. It bases its carefully-documented insights upon informed sociological and anthropological theory.

The study of grandparents raising grandchildren, now almost two decades old, has tended to have a negative bias, emphasizing the difficulties such people face and the negative impact that grandparent caregiving has on them physically, socially, and emotionally. This edited book seeks to reverse this trend by taking a positive approach to understanding grandparent caregivers, focusing on their resilience and resourcefulness. This method reflects a strengths-based approach and the importance of benefit-finding and positive coping. Chapters feature information from both qualitative and quantitative studies and are written by a diverse range of professionals, such as counselors, psychologists, geriatric social workers, and nurse practitioners, to provide multidisciplinary persepctives for practitioners working with grandparent caregivers. Part one discusses the positive qualities that custodial grandparents possess - resilience, resourcefulness, and benefit finding. The second part considers the sociocultural aspects of resilience and resourcefulness in grandparent caregivers. Finally, part three presents strengths-based interventions for working with custodial grandparents. Practitioners will find this to be a valuable resource in their work and the field as a whole, stimulating positive changes in attitudes toward and practices with grandparent caregivers.