Win for grandparents

AdelaideNow... Win for grandparents:

"'What will happen now is that the Commonwealth will come up with a legal description for grandparents in this role - people who have taken on a parenting role,' he said."

Grandparents in a parenting role do need to be financially assisted in the same way as parents. The children often just abandon their children and then the system lands them on the grand parents. There is that kind of expectation but it is the custodial matters which can be the real heart ache in this situation and it is cruel not to clarify them. If grand parents become the substitute parents and finally get the financial support normal parents would, then the stabilty and security they supply needs to be safe guarded so the child isn't sky rocketed back to unstable parents who may regain the child in a period of what becomes short lived stability. In my experience, this is what occurs and it may mean the grandparents never see that grand child again because the child goes interstate with the parents and then they hear second hand that the situation has deteriorated and that the child is at risk. It's very destabilising for the child. I think a time line of care needs to be established. I also believe contact needs to exist but the situations where grand parents become the parents are often when the parents are addicts. It is excruciatingly hard to manage the reality of this but what exists is cruel and I think now this financial support has been acknowledged, we need to look at the rest of the traumatic picture and have the guts to sort it out better than the current mess.