The Information-Related Needs of Grandparent Kinship Carers in Australia A Cross-Jurisdictional Analysis Bridget Jenkins, Deborah Brennan Bettina Cass and kylie valentine ACWA Conference, August 2010

Outline  Grandparents as primary carers of their grandchildren  ARC Linkage project: ‘Grandparents raising grandchildren’  Key practical and policy area: information provision  Findings from the study  Implications for policy and practice

Australian Research Council Linkage Grant Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: A national, state and territory analysis of grandparent-headed families—policy and practice implications Research team:  Professor Bettina Cass and Professor Deborah Brennan (Chief Investigators, SPRC, UNSW)  Associate Professor Sue Green (Chief Investigator,UNSW)  Anne Hampshire (Partner Investigator, Mission Australia)  kylie valentine, Trish Hill, Marilyn McHugh, Christiane Purcal, Bridget Jenkins (APA(I)), Megan Blaxland, Saul Flaxman (SPRC) Partner organisations:  Mission Australia  SA Dept for Families and Communities  NT Dept of Health and Community Services  NSW Dept of Community Services  FaHCSIA

Focus is on the experiences, circumstances and policy contexts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous grandparents raising grandchildren whether role is informal OR related to a State/Territory child protection order OR results from a family law decision Sites:  New South Wales, South Australia & Northern Territory Strategies:  Primary research (focus groups, interviews, survey) with grandparents, policy makers and service providers  Analysis of secondary data including nationally representative data sets  Audit of relevant national, State and Territory policies Features of the study

Conceptual framework  Information needs: vulnerable user groups, with a particular focus on aged users  States, markets and families (and NGOs)  Boundaries between ‘private families’ and ‘state-based care’  Grandparents fall between the cracks of public/private split – relationship with the state is not easily defined  Grandparent carers can miss out on key information, services, and support

Grandparents as a vulnerable user group Characteristics of this group that render them vulnerable:  Lower levels of income and higher levels of economic disadvantage than foster carers and non-kinship care families  Many carers assume parental responsibility during a sudden crisis or emergency  Higher proportion of lone carer families than both foster carers and non-kinship care families  More likely to be older than foster carers  Lower levels of employment, and increased reliance on benefits and allowances (COTA, 2003; ABS, 2005; DHS Victoria, 2000; Dunne and Kettler, 2006).

Previous studies  Grandparents want a ‘one-stop shop’, specialising not only in legal or financial information, but also child protection, housing, and emotional support (COTA,2003)  Grandparents want access to ‘good quality information’- workers who are available, knowledgeable, and caring (Mason, Yardley and Ainsworth, 2009)

Vulnerable user groups: literature review  Parents of children with disabilities  Older people  Long-term unemployed  Long-term illnesses and disabilities  Non-English speaking backgrounds Complexity and/or severity of needs, which present barriers when accessing information. Grandparent kinship carers have things in common with other vulnerable users, and may be vulnerable both as carers and as older people Not all grandparents are vulnerable; grandparents aren’t always vulnerable

Vulnerable user groups and information  Not more information, but making sense of the information that’s there  Authoritative individuals (e.g. doctors, government agency staff) play a critical role  Timing is important  Variety of formats  Outdated information is a key concern for vulnerable user groups  Support groups, both formal and informal, are an important source of information for vulnerable user groups.

Information needs of older people  A number of formats  Available locally  Everyday locations: libraries, doctors offices, and at social services  Affordable (ABS, 2003; Swain et al. 2007; WHO, 2007; Barrett, 2005)

Service providers NSWNTSAC’wealthTotal Service providers Policy-makers Data and method

Findings  Nearly all of the service providers and policy makers interviewed recognised information provision as important  Themes:  Relationship between families and services  Presentation of ‘private’ concerns to public agencies  Examples of good practice  In addition:  Communication between agencies and support services, especially schools and health services

Findings  What kind of information? “[We have] an enormous range of educational seminars that we’ve provided, from the ones that you would anticipate which is managing the behavioural difficulties within children; right through to what do I do if my child is on the internet and pornography pops up... through to my child is asking me about maths and English and I don’t quite understand now these days what that looks like. So there’s like a whole gamut of different things that the grandparents have identified that they have found that they would like additional information on.” NGO

Findings  Need to play the game “I don’t think it’s very clear to them, they don’t know what to ask for … If you just say, ‘I’ve taken over control of my grandchildren’, you don’t necessarily say, ‘so I have to give up work’, or, ‘so I have to move into a bigger place’. You don’t often tell the other parts of your story for us to know what service to offer you … It’s the way you portray your story, it could make a difference in what you’re offered if you don’t know what to ask.” Commonwealth agency

Findings  Difficulty navigating information “And there’s a whole thing about you can give people a whole heap of information which is what people want, but they’re often in a situation where they’re not going to read it all as well.” NGO

Findings  Value of support groups “And so there’s a really amazingly important role that the support groups are playing that the grandparents who attend a support group get all sorts of information because they learn it from the other grandparents.” NGO “But the support groups that we’ve got that are currently running, they run really well because it’s time where the carers can come together and debrief with each other and, you know, just sit back and relax and everyone’s kind of in the same boat with a lot of issues that are happening. So it just means they’re … just able to support each other.” State government agency

Findings  Need for multiple formats “And what we’re saying is that we want something really comprehensive that can bring a whole lot of information that grandparents might need into the one place where they can access it … I know the Internet’s fantastic, but a lot of people find the computer very confronting … So yeah, you’d have it on the Internet as well but you can’t rely on it.” NGO

Findings  Parenting and generational change “A lot of grandparents that I’ve met at stakeholder forums will say when I brought up my children twenty years ago things were different... So they actually are aware of some of the responsibilities they have as an authorised carer.” State government agency

Discussion and conclusion  Need for information stems from age, vulnerabilities and circumstances  Remarkable consistency in recognising needs  Harder to meet those needs  Implications for practice  Good examples in place  Lessons from research  Implications for policy  What’s unique to grandparent-headed families?  What’s shared with foster care and biological families?

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003, Disability, Ageing and Carers: Summary of Findings, Cat No , Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005, ‘Family Functioning: Grandparents Raising Grandchildren’, in Australian Social Trends 2005, Cat No , Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008, Family Characteristics and Transitions, Cat No , Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra Barrett, J., 2005, ‘Support and Information Needs of Older and Disabled Older People in the UK’, Applied Ergonomics, 36, pp Council on the Ageing, 2003, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra. Department of Human Services Victoria (2000b), Audit of Kinship Care Clients: A Summary Report, Child Protection and Juvenile Justice Branch, Community Care Division, DHS, Melbourne. Dunne, G., and L. Kettler, 2006, ‘Social and Emotional Issues of Children in Kinship Foster Care and Stressors on Kinship Carers: A Review of the Australian and International Literature’, Children Australia, 31(2), pp Swain, D. et al., 2007, Accessing Information About Health and Social Care Services, Picker Institute Europe, Oxford Tay, 2001 World Health Organization, 2007, Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide, World Health Organization Press, Geneva Yardley, A., J. Mason and E. Watson, 2009, Kinship Care in NSW: Finding a Way Forward, Social Justice Social Change Research Centre, University of Western Sydney kylie valentine, Social Policy Research Centre, References