Never Empty Nest: Soldier in small army of helpers

ATLANTA, Ga. —

Social worker Judy Perdue’s close-cropped silver hair and economy of motion help offset the humid heat during a recent visit to her clients in downtown Atlanta.

Her clients are grandmothers and grandfathers struggling to raise their grandchildren because the biological parents are dead, in prison or otherwise absent from home.

“Some are great-grandparents,” she said. “They take in the children because they don’t want them going to the state or to foster care. They will sacrifice a lot to make sure these kids stay with family.”

Perdue is a soldier in the too-small army of social workers around the country who specialize in helping grandparents cope with the challenges of raising their children’s children.

As community partnerships coordinator for Project Healthy Grandparents in Atlanta, she’s accustomed to working with families trying to stay together despite problems with drugs, AIDS, abuse, neglect and incarceration.

The responsibility for keeping the family intact in tough times, she said, often ends up with the grandparents even though many are not prepared for the high-tech, high-speed world of today’s youth.

So Project Healthy Grandparents, headquartered at Georgia State University, strives to build family strength in the face of adversity by building a support network to serve the common needs of grandparents as parents.

Those needs range from financial to emotional to psychological to physical - and they require a lot of kindness and attentive listening, said Perdue.

Care for the grandparent, she explains, is as essential as care for the children. Many feel isolated and overwhelmed and guilty and ashamed, she said, because this is not what they expected out of their senior years.

Some, Perdue said, “wonder why they are responsible."

Kelly Kazek is a CNHI News Service Elite Reporting Fellowship recipient. She writes for The News Courier in Athens, Ala.