Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition (Social and Community Affairs)) Share this | Hansard source

In May I received the support of the Senate for a resolution that acknowledged the growing number of grandparents who are taking on the role of full-time carers for their grandchildren. Last week, one of the most important terms of reference adopted for the Senate inquiry into cost of living pressures on Australian seniors was the one that examines the pressure that comes from taking grandparenting responsibilities. And I might just say my comments have nothing to do with the fact that I have just become a grandmother of the most gorgeous little boy on this earth!

Earlier this year a new study into the growing phenomenon of full-time-caring grandparents lifted the lid on what is an important factor in the work-family balance juggling act that many working parents are confronting. ABS statistics show that 22,500 grandparents in Australia had full primary care of their grandchildren in 2003. This means that nationally 31,100 children under 17 lived with their grandparents on a full-time basis. Thirty per cent of those grandparents are in New South Wales. The number of children in the care of grandparents and foster parents escalated by 45 per cent between 1996 and 2003. As the number of foster carers diminishes, it is grandparents and other relatives who are being increasingly called on to care for children. Grandparents take on the primary carer role for their grandchildren when the parents are no longer able to do so. There are lots of reasons for that, of course, including the death of a parent, substance abuse, disability or mental illness, imprisonment, family violence, child abuse, neglect or abandonment. In those kinds of circumstances they take on that role out of love and concern for the two generations involved. They often do it at great personal cost and, as such, are making a valuable contribution to society by providing family continuity, most importantly, and also a stable, secure environment for the children, who may be traumatised by the circumstances that brought them there. Certainly they are preventing the children from going into state funded care. If children who cannot be cared for by their parents are taken into the out-of-home care system, the financial burden falls onto the welfare system. It is an additional and often unrecognised cost of, for example, illicit drug use.

It was of great interest to me to hear firsthand from grandparents about the inequities that exist in the system. Grandparents routinely take on major caring responsibilities in Indigenous families and among several cultural groups. However, for most grandparent carers, 60 per cent of whom receive a Centrelink payment as their main source of income, becoming parents for a second time is quite unexpected and creates a number of financial pressures. It was only when I visited a grandparents support group recently that I learnt the extent to which they are carrying a financial burden that is not recognised by the social support system. I am quite sure that my colleagues here can begin to imagine how this might impact on their own life circumstances. Grandparents as carers: we have all been there and done that. I think having to care for children again would be quite physically exhausting.

What happens to retirement plans, which are often turned upside down? Grandparent carers discover that their social lives are suddenly reshaped by their caring responsibilities. Not everyone is sympathetic to that, especially if the care of the grandchildren has come as a result of parental drug misuse. Many grandparent carers would benefit from additional financial, social and emotional help and from better targeted information about how to access that help. Despite the increase in the number of grandparents who are caring for their grandchildren, and the many issues that they have, there are few services in Australia directed to assisting them. Their situation is certainly not widely understood.

There has been some progress on this front. In 2005, Centrelink in Perth set up a grandparent liaison office as a result of the Grandcare program that was begun by Wanslea Family Services in 2002. Grandcare won recognition at the 2004 community service industry awards in the ‘being innovative’ category for large organisations. The Western Australian Department for Community Development provided funding to pilot the program and then to expand it to now include at least 10 support groups around Western Australia. And from the feedback Wanslea received, it was able to recommend to Centrelink that it have a central number that grandparents could call for specialist help. The outcome is that Centrelink has established a grandparent liaison officer in Perth who can provide a specialised service.

Another pleasing initiative happened in South Australia last month. The government officially recognised grandparent carers, giving them better access to services and benefits. In a national first, grandparents will benefit from a statutory declaration that recognises their full-time care of children. This will allow them to enrol children in school, to give consent for medical and dental services, to authorise school excursions and to obtain birth certificates. These are all the kinds of rights that parents take for granted, and the lack of them causes so much unnecessary frustration for grandparent carers in other states. Without legal custody, grandparents have difficulty obtaining documents such as birth certificates and Medicare cards, they cannot authorise medical treatment and they cannot give consent to participation in school activities.

All of this is a move in the right direction, but many government, non-government and federal government agencies, such as Medicare, are not included in the South Australian scheme. They have resisted requests in order to keep in line with agency policy. Until these agencies accept the statutory declaration at a national level, the initiative will be limited. It would be good to see these admirable developments adopted all around the country. At the moment there is no consistency across and within jurisdictions in relation to the recognition of and support for grandparent carers. There is a strong case for it on equity grounds alone.

Think what good sense it would make to establish a national 24-hour information service, or to allow grandparent primary carers to have greater access to foster care payments, family tax benefits and the childcare rebate scheme. The assumption that nanna and pop are always available for free child care is a mistake. If grandparents are taking a weight off the public purse, their contribution to the economy should be recognised. A report in February this year by Families Australia, the nation’s peak independent not-for-profit organisation, found that one in five young children is now cared for by grandparents, 98 per cent of whom are doing it for free.

This is the experience of some grandparents who are involved in a support network here in the ACT that is organised by Marymead. The report of the Australian National Council on Drugs entitled Drug use in the family: impacts and implications for children was released last month. Recommendation 15 of this report states:

Grandparents are increasingly taking on full-time caring responsibilities in response to concerns for the welfare of their grandchildren due to their own children’s substance misuse. The support needs of these grandparent carers are many and at present are only erratically addressed. Australian research is urgently needed to determine best practice models for supporting grandparent carers.

Another program I heard about once I started looking at this issue is the Mirabel Foundation, established in 1998 to help children who have been orphaned or abandoned because of this specific illicit drug use issue and who are now in the care of extended family, usually grandparents. Mirabel believe that every child deserves a childhood, and their mission is to break the destructive cycle of addiction. They have helped over 800 children and 500 grandparents across New South Wales and Victoria since they were established. Can you imagine working with grandparents who are well into their eighties? As you can imagine, the stress of raising young children can be particularly profound for them.

The legal challenges are the biggest and toughest issue. Many grandparents hope they will be carers only temporarily, until the parents are again able to care for their children. If grandparents seek legal custody, they bring legal proceedings against their own relative, which you can imagine places extraordinary pressures on family relationships. They are seldom eligible for legal aid and they often face high legal bills. What we need to do is to celebrate the contribution that grandparent carers make. Our children need protection and care, and our caring grandparents need official recognition. We owe it to both of these groups to do something about this.