Fannin County Family Connection, 501 Fannin Industrial Park, Blue Ridge, Georgia 30513
Fannin County Family Connection, 501 Fannin Industrial Park, Blue Ridge, Georgia 30513
706-632-6063
Family Connection Family Care Program
What is Family Care?
Family Care exists when relatives step up to raise children when their parents cannot care for them.
Throughout history, families have cared for relative children during times of illness, poverty, incarceration, death, violence or other family crises. Family Care routinely exists outside of the social service or court systems. While relatives other than grandparents provide Family Care, it is grandparents who most often step in when parents cannot.
In Georgia, just over 263,000 grandparents are living with their grandchildren. For older adults, age 60+ in Georgia, 12% live below the poverty level. However, 23.6% of adults age 60+ who are responsible for grandchildren live below the poverty level. A whopping 58.1 of grandparents who are responsible for grandchildren are still in the workforce.
Here at home, in July, August, and September of 2022 combined, the Family Connection Food Pantry served 248 families that included at least one adult 55 years or older and at least one child younger than 18 years of age.
Family caregivers need assistance, but often do not know they are eligible for resource services, or they do not know how to access assistance.
Here are the numbers:
• Less than 12% receive help from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, although nearly all are eligible.
• Only 42% of low-income Family Care families get Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (SNAP – “food stamps”).
• Only 42% of children in Family Care situations are covered by Medicaid.
• Assistance with children and housing costs are received by only 17% and 15% of Family Care families, respectively.
A Message from Sherry Morris on Family Care:
“Through my work at Family Connection, I have learned that our community is full of grandparents and great grandparents raising grandchildren and great grandchildren,” said Morris, “and these families need our support.”
According to Morris, there are over 300 families in Fannin whereby relatives have taken on the duty of raising familial children.
“Often these families receive children unexpectedly and are unprepared emotionally and financially," she said, "and that’s where Family Connection can help."
Clients of the FCFC Food Pantry are asked to submit the names and ages of all individuals living in their household. With this data, staff and volunteers noticed a widening age gap between adults and children in many of those households.
“This then led to conversations with a sampling of those families,” said Morris, “which revealed that the reason for the widening age gap is because many grandparents, great grandparents and other family members have found themselves, through no fault of their own, raising familial children, like grands and great grands.”
Morris then hosted a group of these caregivers to learn more.
“These caregivers were relieved to know they were not alone in raising familial children,” said Morris. “They also shared that taking on this responsibility had stretched them financially leaving them with little to nothing once basic living expenses were paid.”
“The discovery of this growing population of familial caregivers and their challenges led Family Connection to create the Family Care program,” Morris said, “to help support these families.
Money raised through grants and fundraising activities will support children living in Family Care homes, outfitting a conversion vehicle, and creating a support group for these families.
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