Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand today to commend the work of so many Australian grandparents who are caring for their grandchildren. It is nearly 10 years since a Tasmanian joint standing committee handed down a report on issues relating to custodial grandparents. That committee, which I had the privilege of chairing, focused on the needs of grandparents who had assumed the responsibility of parenting their grandchildren. Now, as then, grandparents generally assume parental responsibility for their grandchildren in response to family crisis or dysfunction. The child's parents may be dead or injured, victims of drug or alcohol addiction, incarcerated or have suffered mental health problems and are no longer able to care for their children. The grandparents who are confronted with such circumstances often feel compelled to step in and rescue their grandchildren from neglect.

The committee found that, having been removed from a situation risk, many grandchildren fell outside the operational sphere of state welfare authorities and, even though family support services may be desperately needed, the informal custody arrangements usually rendered such cases invisible to authorities. Research shows that kinship care—both formal and informal and where relatives, usually grandparents, are raising children who are not their own—was and is a growing area of out-of-home care both in Australia and internationally.

It is difficult to quantify the number of children in the care of grandparents as specific data is hard to get. An estimate derived from Centrelink data on recipients of family tax benefits suggests that in 2003 about seven per cent of primary carers of children were, in fact, grandparents. Custodial grandparents are also disheartened by the seemingly differential treatment they encounter in seeking legal aid assistance. The lower means-asset test threshold applied to applicants is considered unfair by many grandparents, as they are excluded. Grandparents on low incomes may be disqualified from obtaining legal aid assistance simply because they are in a modest home, while parents who may be responsible for the abuse or neglect of their children may qualify for such assistance on economic grounds. Custodial grandparents often find it difficult to gain recognition in the education system and feel out of touch in an environment which has changed dramatically since they were at school. The committee noted in its report that concern for student privacy and a lack of protocols that can readily identify the primary caregiver of a child can lead to poor communication between schools and custodial grandparents.

The need for better information was often referred to in the report. Custodial grandparents emphasised the need for non-material assistance with raising their grandchildren, information on services and entitlements and assistance with parenting skills. Access to respite care or simply someone to talk to were also identified by grandparents as areas of need that would help them adjust to their new circumstances. Stress is a significant health issue for many custodial grandparents. The compounding effects of financial and emotional stress can lead to significant health problems. The stress of meeting the demands and responsibilities of caring for their grandchildren, coupled with the grief, guilt or anxiety felt for the plight of the children's parents may compromise the health of those grandparents and diminish their ability to cope.

A primary concern identified on a systemic level is that custodial grandparents are often not recognised as a distinct client group by the family support services that should be assisting them. The lack of an appropriate pigeonhole for custodial grandparents within government agencies leads to increased complexity for grandparents to negotiate and deal with these agencies.

The then commissioner for children recognised the 'invisible' status of some custody arrangements and saw the need for informal protocols to assist children in such family structures. The use of community-based organisations to provide outreach programs for targeted assistance was proposed as a possible solution. I am pleased to be able to say that, in 2010, more than 2,000 grandparents caring for their grandchildren in Tasmania had their needs reassessed. Many of them were then able to access kinship care payments—the financial equivalent of the foster care payment and far more than the $14 a week they were getting as recipients of the relative carer payment. The committee asked that Centrelink payments to eligible custodial grandparents be streamlined and that benefits be made readily available. Pleasingly, family payments A and B are now payable directly to custodial grandparents. Things have improved.

The committee also recommended that consideration be given to a review of the guidelines relating to legal aid for custodial grandparents. Ten years later, it is still of considerable concern that grandparents in this situation are at a disadvantage when accessing legal aid. The committee recommended that a campaign to increase community awareness about custodial grandparents be undertaken, that specialist counselling services be provided to address issues such as stress and strategies for coping with the behavioural problems of children in their care, and that financial support be provided for the establishment of custodial grandparent support groups and for relevant existing community-based organisations to provide outreach programs.

There are now two dedicated workers based in Tasmania to support custodial grandparents, and services are provided through our Gateway Services. It is pleasing to see that the current Tasmanian Commissioner for Children has put out a resource kit for carers that covers many of the issues covered in the committee's report. Despite the report calling for respite services for custodial grandparents, this remains very difficult to access. The report asks that further research be undertaken to elicit the precise nature and extent of the problems facing custodial grandparents in order to better tailor assistance and support.

We should be extremely grateful as a community that so many grandparents are willing to show the requisite love and strength to take on their grandchildren and to give them the chance to have happy and productive lives. Despite the progress that has been made, I believe we are still failing those grandparents and, consequently, their grandchildren, by not doing more to help resolve their issues. This goes deep into our society. The pressures on grandparents are growing—not only on custodial grandparents but all grandparents who are supporting families impacted by the effects of unemployment, marital instability and financial pressures, let alone drug, alcohol and mental health impacts. I salute Australia's grandparents.