Panel Paper:
How Well Does the “Safety Net” Work for Family Safety Nets?
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Public policies have led to higher rates of GPHH and have affected the supports available to GPHH. Most legislation in the last 20 years has focused on GPHH within the child welfare system. While legislation on behalf of the bulk of relatives providing care outside of the child welfare system has consisted largely of budget-neutral policies, such as educational and health care consent laws. Such policies have not remedied the fewer resources and services available to families in informal kinship care. Nor have they addressed that the level of need experienced by GPHH is not reflected in their overall benefit receipt patterns. Therefore, important questions remain unanswered about what accounts for variation in informal caregivers’ access to resources and services. More generally, we have little evidence about how policies intersect with the lived experiences of GPHH (Pittman 2018; 2015). Given the continued increase in GPHH and their high poverty rates, policymakers need to consider whether current policies are appropriately supporting families providing care outside of the child welfare system.
This research has three aims: First, I use qualitative data collected from 58 African American grandmothers raising grandchildren in SGH to examine the ways that family policy is currently responding to informal kinship caregivers. Second, I investigate how these families are treated by TANF, subsidized housing and child care. Third, I document the coping strategies caregivers use to overcome barriers to obtaining resources and services.
My research shows that GPHH experience a structural lag between the ways their families form and operate, family law, and social welfare policies and practices. Such lag exacerbates the ways in which grandparents’ transition into and experience their role as parenting surrogates. I reveal how and why women in non-normative families, lacking legal protections and publicly recognized authority as parents, must negotiate risk in pursuit of resources. I demonstrate that these grandmothers struggle for economic survival while seeking simultaneously to minimize the risk of losing their grandchildren and maximize their chances of receiving public assistance. I argue that grandmothers in SGH face significant challenges obtaining government benefits due to policy eligibility guidelines, street-level implementation, and family dynamics. Ultimately, I illustrate how the severe deprivation experienced by women in SGH is exacerbated by their exclusion from safety net programs that could help them support the children in their care.
