Grandparents Fear Welfare Crisis

On a recent cloudy afternoon with the threat of rain hanging heavily over her Inglewood home, 47-year-old Bonnie de la Cruz was pondering the sometimes distressing curves that life has thrown her way.

As her daughter has struggled with drug addiction, she has stepped in to rear a grandson, coping with the stresses and strains of caring for a 7-year-old with cystic fibrosis.

She has managed this feat on $830 a month--welfare for her, disability benefits for him--leaving behind a 20-year career to manage the daily medical ordeals and court challenges that began when she pursued legal guardianship of the boy.

Now, there is a new worry to consider: The recently enacted federal welfare law may strip De La Cruz of government assistance, forcing her to give up full-time care of her grandson to find a job. She questions the purpose this would serve.

“If he were a healthy, well child, I would have gone back to work,” said the former social worker. “But what are they giving me--$302 a month? They would have to pay way more to have someone else take care of him. The thing is, the taxpayers want to lower the [welfare] rolls, but what they don’t realize is that it’s just going to be added to some other roll.”

The paradoxes and pitfalls of competing public policies unleashed by the landmark legislation overhauling 60 years of welfare policy may be no more starkly illustrated than in the dilemma faced by De La Cruz and grandparents like her.

Grandparents acting as parents are a growing American phenomenon, fueled by the explosion of crack cocaine use, unwanted teenage pregnancy, child abuse and high divorce rates.

But the welfare overhaul provides no exemptions for fixed or low-income grandparents from work requirements that compel welfare recipients to find a job within two years or lose their aid. Nor are grandparents exempted from the law’s five-year lifetime cap on welfare entitlements.

Most vulnerable are those under 65--too young for Social Security and receiving welfare benefits as a head of the household--as well as those seeking benefits only for their grandchildren.

The law raises a host of perplexing issues that lawmakers in California and other states must address: Should a 60-year-old grandmother caring for three grandchildren be forced to find a job to receive benefits? What if a person now on Aid to Families With Dependent Children assumes responsibility for a grandchild in 15 years?

Should authorities force a grandparent to obtain legal custody of a child to receive benefits, even at the risk of further destabilizing family relations? What if a child from out of state comes to live with a grandparent--which state’s welfare rules would apply?

In the rush to adopt the tough new guidelines and reduce welfare caseloads, states tackling these thorny questions will be hit by a barrage of competing demands that will pit the young against the old and parent against child, say social services advocates.

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“States could face a crisis, particularly if the demographic trend with grandparents continues,” said Faith Mullen, a senior policy analyst with the American Assn. of Retired Persons’ Public Policy Institute.

The new law abolishes AFDC and replaces it with annual lump-sum payments to the states known as block grants. It limits lifetime benefits to any given recipient to five years and sets out a rigorous timetable by which states must get people into jobs--half of all recipients must be working by 2002 or a state will face stiff financial penalties.

States are allowed to exempt 20% of their caseloads from the five-year limit, and experts say that rule will compel wrenching decisions between those with physical and mental disabilities and other problems that make them hard to employ.

“How do you choose between a 20-year-old mother who is ill and a 60-year-old grandmother caring for a grandchild?” Mullen asked.

Some of these questions were not entirely unforeseen. Retiring Sen. William Cohen (R-Maine), who chairs the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging, had proposed making it easier for dependent grandchildren to receive some benefits, provisions that were deemed too costly and left out of the final bill.

“It was very difficult to get enough votes to exempt grandparents from requirements, given uncertainty about just what we were dealing with,” said committee counsel Liz Liess. “Some of our concerns have been allayed, but with the cautious eye of, let’s be careful to track the population and make sure they are not harmed as this is implemented.”

In 1994, the Census Bureau reported that grandparents are the primary caregivers for more than 1.4 million children nationwide. In California, 750,000 grandparents have legal guardianship of their grandchildren, with the number projected to rise to more than 1 million by the year 2000.

The AARP estimates that 56% of grandparent-headed households have annual incomes under $20,000; as many as 75% of families headed by grandparents in California receive AFDC, according to the group.

There is increasing concern that the welfare changes may discourage some grandparents from assuming responsibility for their grandchildren, swamping the nation’s already overtaxed foster-care system.

Social analysts are particularly concerned that states under fierce pressures to reduce caseloads and the attendant costs of public assistance will adopt unrealistic standards.

States could require some grandparents to contribute a portion of their savings before their grandchildren could become eligible for benefits.

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“If it means we have to use up our retirement money to take care of the kids, we’ve got a big problem,” said Margie Davis, founder of a San Diego grandparents’ support group.

Others worry about the social ramifications of shifting welfare policy. Under the new law, states could force grandparents to obtain legal custody of children in order to receive assistance, even though studies indicate that many grandparents hope their children and grandchildren will be reunited someday.

States will also have the option of making grandparents liable for the child support payments of their minor children. And under the new law, states can force teenage mothers to remain at home in order to receive welfare benefits, a prospect that alarms some grandparents.

“It seems the system feels that we are just going to open the door to teenage mothers,” said Evelyn Mason, a 56-year-old Los Angeles grandmother rearing five special-needs children. “We are not just taking in the teenage mother; we’re taking in her problems too. There is a father attached to that mother. Was she involved in gangs, in drugs? Are we going to open our doors to danger?”

Samantha Scott, 53, who is rearing her 3- and 5-year-old grandchildren, said she has had to deal with issues of drugs and gangs. Scott and her grandchildren live on $594 in monthly AFDC benefits. She never envisioned she would be spending her middle age rearing a second family.

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“I hoped and prayed that when my kids got married I would have grandchildren to spoil and send home,” she said, sitting in her neat North Hollywood apartment. “Trying to get people off welfare is great, but you’re looking at grandparents who did not give birth to another set of children, and to place the same burdens on them seems terribly unfair.”

State lawmakers devising ways to implement the new welfare law admit that the issues are complex. Under a just-announced plan released by Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, grandparents in his state would not be exempt from work requirements, but each case would be judged individually to determine what is best for the family, said Michael Thurmond, director of the Georgia Department of Family and Children’s Services.

Thurmond said that many grandparents caring for grandchildren do not fit stereotypes of the elderly and that states should not get caught up in the age issue. “There clearly will be some who will be able to meet work requirements, and that may be the best thing for them,” he said.

California officials said they have not determined how they will deal with the grandparent issue. The California Commission on Aging has scheduled a public hearing on welfare reforms next month, said executive director John Kehoe.

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The advisory panel this year supported state legislation that would have allowed grandparents to become automatically eligible for AFDC foster care payments when they are the legal guardians.

The legislation failed--and could fail again.

“We are competing with so many different other aspects [under the law] that it will be a question of the squeaky wheel getting the oil,” Kehoe said. “If the grandparent issue didn’t rank highly before welfare reform passed, unless there’s an awful lot of momentum behind it, it’s not going to have much chance now.”