The Age Guide: Perspectives on the Aging Journey

The Great Reconnection: Raising Grandchildren

• Age Guide • Season 3 • Episode 4

Share episode

In this episode, we continue our celebration of our 50th-anniversary theme, The Great Reconnection. We're discussing the importance of building connections and supporting older adults who are caring for children. We interviewed Sheree Stillwell, a grandparent raising a grandson and also a co-facilitator of a local support group for grandparents raising children. Additionally, she participates in State Representative Natalie Manley's Legislative Committee on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. Sheree provided us with a firsthand look at the experience of grandparents who are stepping in and parenting again.

The Grandparents Raising Grandchildren support group meets in-person on the Third Tuesday of the Month September-May in Will County.
For more information and the meeting location contact Mary White at paracletetoo@aol.com or Sheree Stilwell at FamilyGroupsHelp@gmail.com

http://ageguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Grandparents-Flyer-1-4.10.23-scaled.jpg

http://ageguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Rep-Manley-Senior-Flyer.png

Facebook: facebook.com/AgeGuide
Twitter: twitter.com/AgeGuide
Instagram: instagram.com/theageguidepodcast
Podcast: ageguide.org/the-age-guide-podcast
Website: ageguide.org

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, and welcome to The Age Guide, perspectives on the aging journey. We are here to be your personal age guide and enhance your quality of life on the road ahead. In this episode, we continue our celebration of our 50th anniversary theme, The Great Reconnection. We're talking about helping build connections and supports for a very special group of older adults, those caring for children. Some are grandparents, some are aunts, uncles, or even unrelated friends. But they are all caregivers who have found themselves parenting children in their 60s and beyond. Let's listen in.

SPEAKER_03:

Hello and welcome everyone back to the Age Guide podcast. I am here today with Cherie Stillwell. She's a grandparent raising a grandson, and she's also a co-facilitator of a grandparent support group, and she participates in State Representative Natalie Manley's Legislative Committee on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren. We've invited her here as part of our series on kinship caregivers, older adults raising children. Cherie will give us a firsthand look at the experience for grandparents Sheree, thank you so much for being here with us today.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_03:

I would like to start by asking you if you could share a little bit about your caregiving journey. Who are you caring for? How long has it been? Just give us a little background story.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, my husband and I are raising our grandson. He just turned 11 a few days ago. And we have had him since the day he was released from the NICU. He was a preemie. And he had some struggles. And he continued to have struggles for quite a while. Lots of therapies. But it was just something that we didn't think twice about doing. At the time, his dad, who was our son, and his mom, that was his girlfriend, just were not capable of taking care of him, and especially with all the needs and services that he needed. And they loved him really, you know, with all their hearts. So they wanted the best for him. So he was placed with us. We did have legal guardianship. And then shortly after that, we had full adoption of him. So we've had him all along. And every year for the last few years around his birthday, he asked me to tell him his story. And his story is the night that I drove his mom and his dad to the hospital and he was gonna be born. And his mom wanted me with them in the birthing suite. So I had the opportunity to be there from the second that he was born.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And it was a struggle. And there were some issues there. And now Jaden, he fills in little parts of the story now because he knows it so

SPEAKER_03:

well. That's so important.

SPEAKER_02:

But he's always known. He's always known that he's adopted. He knows both of his parents. He knows that he's loved by all of these people. And he's just a happy little boy.

SPEAKER_03:

Very good. That must have been quite a surprise, though, having to step in and start parenting a child again. I mean, where were you in your career? Were you retired at the time? Were you just, you know, sitting around waiting to be a grandma? Or did you have things going on?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we never envisioned this, I can tell you that. I always wanted three boys. We had two. We have an older son and then Chad, who's our middle son. And then now we have Jaden. So it was kind of a joke

SPEAKER_03:

that you needed another son. He needed one more.

SPEAKER_02:

And little Jay will say, I'm your third, you know, you're like three sons. I'm like, yes, you are. But no, you know, I was working and. My husband, he could retire, and so he did. He retired. He took care of Jayden during the day. And I worked for about another year and a half. Jayden was about 18 months old when I retired. So I was working 50, 60 hours a week. And then when I would come home, I would take over with Jaden. So it was a little

SPEAKER_03:

tough there. That's exhausting because you got the nighttime shift with a preemie. It takes them a lot longer to sleep through the night and to do everything, you know, to be able to take their bottles. Everything can be kind of a struggle at first. So that is really a lot to take on, Cherie.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was because with him, he was so tiny. We had to wake him up every 90 minutes, whether he was asleep or not, to feed him because he could only take such a small amount of the formula at a time. Okay. That was a whole other thing. We had to change formulas like five, six times. Trying

SPEAKER_03:

to find the right thing for him. And then you have to get up and go to work the next day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, fortunately, I don't require a real lot of sleep. Well,

SPEAKER_03:

good thing, because I'm sure you weren't getting any.

UNKNOWN:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

So that helped. But then I retired from the university, but then I took on a couple of different other jobs for a while. And I do a lot of advocacy work with other programs within Will County. So I did some work with that as well. But it was a challenge and it was different because I had envisioned being the grandma that got my grandchildren on Friday night and on Saturday we played and baked cookies and then they went home. But that's not what I got to be because I had to be like the mom. I had to be the disciplinarian. But my mom, we are so blessed, is still here with us. She's 87 and she is the grandma. She lets him eat ice cream whenever he wants. She lets him have cookies for breakfast.

SPEAKER_03:

So he still gets to experience being spoiled by grandparents. And that's important. Yes. Wonderful. But you have the tough job of kind of trying to walk that balance. You are a grandma, but you're also mom. Like you said, that's a tough role.

SPEAKER_02:

It is. It can be. But he brings so much joy. you know, into our life. And like people will say, oh, he keeps you young. So I guess, you know, maybe that part of that is true too, because,

SPEAKER_05:

you

SPEAKER_02:

know, if I didn't have him, I wouldn't be going to the fun zone. on a Saturday with, you know, 300 kids screaming for a birthday party. It

SPEAKER_03:

keeps you on your toes and you're trying new things and doing things like you said that you would never do otherwise. And that can be a good thing. So there's definitely some benefits to grandparenting. And they say it's so different from being a parent. And yet you are doing both things. So I'm sure that's kind of a balancing game.

SPEAKER_02:

It is. Well, I tell people that, you know, people will be, oh, is that your grandson? And I'm like, yes, he is. But we're doubly blessed. He is our grandson, but he's also legally our son because we adopted him. And, you know, that's how we feel. I mean, he's, you know, he's just ours. I mean, that's just how we see him. But He's special. He is special. And sometimes my other two say, I think you loved Jayden more than you do us. And I'm like, he's special.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. It definitely is. So where do you go then to get, you know, some support to find other people who are maybe in the same situation? What has been the most helpful support that you've received in raising Jayden?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, when we started on this journey, all of our friends, people in our social circle, nobody was doing this. It was just us. We didn't have any support. We did not have any connections. We didn't know what we didn't know, for sure. We didn't know what was available. We received a lot of wrong information. from some of the agencies that we were trying to deal with. And we struggled. We struggled a lot. And we had to deal with the school districts, IEPs and therapies and things that we had never dealt with before were all challenges. But then probably a little over five years ago, I met one of my dearest friends now. Dr. Mary White, and she founded our Grandparents Raising Children group. And we do call it Grandparents Raising Children because some grandparents are raising a niece or a nephew. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

Or even maybe somebody who's not really kin. Not necessarily biologically related, but they're raising the child because they have an emotional relationship or attachment to them. So there's all different kinds of, quote, grandparents out there, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Right. And so Mary and I, you know, we're just building this group. And we provide educational support and resources. We bring in various speakers from various agencies to share what they can and benefits and things that would be available to the grandparents and to the grandchildren. So that's kind of where we get our support because you find that your life changes in all areas when all of a sudden You're in your 50s or your 60s or some people are in their 70s and now you're responsible for a child. You can't just at the drop of a hat go out to dinner with another couple. You can't in the summertime just hop in the car and go down to the lake and go fishing. You have these other responsibilities and after a while some of those phone calls for invitations and things like that kind of start to wane.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. So it really affects your social life and it can be very isolating, I imagine. It

SPEAKER_02:

can. Yes, it can. So When you

SPEAKER_03:

have kids in your 20s or 30s, everybody else in your cohort, your friends tend to be doing the same thing. They're all starting families and you have all these other parents to hang out with. And if you have a question, you have a million resources. All of your friends are in the same boat. But if you're starting over again later in life, you don't have that opportunity. peer group so much. So you guys have kind of created that through your support group, a network of folks that can share information and ideas. And then also, I imagine that once you're raising a child who's been, for one reason or another, unable to be raised by their biological parents, you're going to have some trauma, you're going to have some special needs, you're going to have educational issues. So then you've got all of that layer on top of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello and welcome to your Medicare Minute. We are here with Val Guzman, our benefit access specialist here at Age Guide. Today we have a question from Pablo in Will County. He said, I see a professional therapist for my therapy appointments, but Medicare hasn't been covering those appointments.

SPEAKER_00:

What should I do next? Starting in 2024, Medicare has expanded the mental health services that are covered, and that includes therapy appointments with marriage and family counselors and licensed professional counselors. Medicare also expanded how you access those services by covering more telehealth services. This means you can talk to doctors on the phone or even with video calls. You can check with your doctor to see if they accept Medicare or check with your Medicare plan to help you find providers that do accept Medicare. And one more thing you can try is you can ask your current doctor or counselor to now accept Medicare since this is a newer benefit for 2024.

SPEAKER_03:

So Cherie, can you tell me a little bit more about the legislative committee and the work that you did with Representative Natalie Manley?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure, absolutely. We started out, she just gathered a lot of information. We would meet every month, and she would just ask, tell me some of the challenges that you're having. And within our group, there were generally maybe 10 people 10 to 12 grandparents that would attend. There's a lot more in our group, but many of them are back to work. They're working. They have to work. So they, you know, they couldn't attend during the day. But each family, some are couples and some are grandparents, grandmothers on their own raising the children. They would share, right, they would share some of the challenges that they were facing in regards to services such as insurance for the children, a lot of challenges with the school districts, a lot of challenges. Challenges with getting them to the doctor and getting their medical records and you know, documents and things such as that. So we would discuss that and she would bring on via Zoom most of the time, but sometimes in person, people from different agencies. And she would want us to explain to them the challenges that we were facing. One of the biggest challenges is accurate information from the staff at various agencies. You could call

SPEAKER_03:

five times.

SPEAKER_02:

You could call five times and speak to five different people and receive five different answers. And some of those people were supervisors. So that was very challenging. And that's one of the things when, as we continue to discuss these things, And I said, we need like an advocate. We need somebody that knows the ins and outs and the red tape of the various agencies that can help guide a grandparent. Some of our grandparents don't even use a computer. Some of our grandparents are in their 80s. This is foreign to them. And almost anything you do nowadays, but especially anything with what was needed for the grandkids, you have to fill out things on the computer. You have to, you know, attach documents. They don't know how to do that. So as we discussed more issues, she totally saw the need, you know, for help and for an advocacy program. And that's when she decided She submitted it, and it was great. We're looking forward to that starting up and helping other grandparents. We had a gentleman. He came to our meeting a couple months ago. He'd heard about it from somebody at a school. He came to our meeting. His granddaughter had been dropped off with him. He had nothing. He had no information, no documents on her. He did not have a birth certificate. She had been with him for two months and he had been trying to get her into school for two months. And the school would not let him register her. And that's wrong. You are supposed to be able to register a child and you're supposed to be able to have 60 days. to provide the necessary immunizations and documents and things like that. So we were kind of help guiding him and advising him, explaining to him how he could get emergency guardianship like the next day. So those are the kinds of things that we do that we try to help people with that none of us knew. So That's the things that grandparents are facing.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, and so that support is so important. The legislation that Representative Manley got through, I believe, provides some special funding to do those kinds of supports, to do the advocacy work, walking grandparents through some of these government systems that they need to support the kids. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02:

It is, and it is going to be under the umbrella of the Will County Senior Services Center.

SPEAKER_03:

they'll be providing the services.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And, and the person will, you know, kind of be located there, you know, if they need to meet with grandparents, they'll have the support of that agency, you know, for whatever they need to do, making copies and things such as that. And it's a, it's a three-year pilot program.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, three years. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. It's three years. And from what, If I'm understanding this correctly, I think I am, it is the only program of that type in this state. And I don't know if there's any other states that have one, but Representative Manley is very optimistic that other counties will want to mirror what we're gonna be doing with this program.

SPEAKER_03:

Right, so if this works, this could spread and become... you know, countywide all over the state of Illinois. And then maybe even other states will pick this up. It's really something that's needed. So I'm so excited that Illinois gets to be the pilot for that. And right here in our region. And like you said, the great thing about it being housed in Senior Services Will County is they're also one of our funded partners. We provide Older Americans Act services funding to them. So they have a lot of other programs that they can connect these grandparents to as well that will, you know. in effect help with the parenting. Besides just helping grandparents raising grandchildren, they can connect folks to nutrition programs and health promotion programs and activities and things like that that they might need as well. Because we want to keep these grandparents healthy and independent as long as possible because they've got a really big job with raising their kids. So beyond just all of the parenting factors, there's all of the services that we all just need as we're getting older and trying to stay independent, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. The one thing that we discussed also is getting the information out there. I have flyers for our grandparents support group. I also have flyers for other support groups that I facilitate and lead. Great. Which I have given to the social workers at our grandson's school district. And they have passed those on to some grandparents that you know that they are dealing with but we need to get the information out there um so we were hoping that that's one of the topics um that we're going to be discussing again with representative manly

SPEAKER_04:

on

SPEAKER_02:

how to have some of this information available maybe even at physicians you know pediatric offices good

SPEAKER_03:

idea

SPEAKER_02:

um At libraries, you know, at different school districts. And the

SPEAKER_03:

school social workers, like you said, that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Jaden's social worker in our school district was phenomenal. She called me a couple different times. You know, she had ran into a grandparent in this situation and, you know, asked, you know, I'm going to give them your flyer. Can I give them your name and number? I'm like, absolutely. Yeah. Because it's the social worker usually that has the contact and knows a little bit about the situation.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. Mm-hmm. Excellent. Well, and we will share those flyers in our show notes and make sure that we're sharing those resources and information in the show notes for this podcast as well. So be sure to check that out. Okay, looking for that. And hopefully, you know, people will hear this podcast, and they'll realize that there's resources out there. So if they meet somebody, or if they themselves are providing care for a child, they'll, they'll reach out and be able to get some of those resources. I And having that support is just so important.

SPEAKER_02:

It is. And in our support group, we bring in guest speakers. We bring in people from Greenlight Services, like legal attorneys that will discuss different issues. People can ask them questions. We bring in the local truancy officer. We do have some grandparents with... with some younger teens, um, that sometimes can be a challenge when it comes to school.

SPEAKER_03:

That's a challenge for everyone. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

So we had him come in and, you know, and explain a lot of things and, and offer, you know, some resources and, um, things like that. So we have had people come in, um, from these agencies, um, to talk, share information, you know, bring, pamphlets and flyers, you know, that they can share. And then we, you know, we bring people in locally from the community, from the libraries to, you know, just explain what they offer. The libraries offer just a plethora of free resources. activities and resources for kids so you know we just wanted to make sure grandparents are utilizing as as many services like that as they can

SPEAKER_03:

that's excellent yes because there are things out there you just have to dig and sometimes grandparents don't have time for that digging so if you can put it out there in front of them that's very helpful

SPEAKER_02:

yes a lot of these grandparents they have you know some medical challenges of their own and you know appointments and and things like that so Yeah, just to try to make things a little bit more accessible, a little bit easier to deal with. That's kind of our goal.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, yes. So important. And one of the amazing things about you grandparents that are raising children is that you are saving the state thousands of dollars that they would be spending on out of home care through the foster care system. The foster care system in Illinois is overwhelmed, backed up, totally a mess right now, to be honest. And grandparents are stepping in and doing such an important job and they need resources and support too. And sometimes I know they can get involved in DCFS can help support and people maybe don't always know that, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. For instance, in our case, DCFS was involved through the hospital when Jayden was born. And so we were involved with them for a very short period of time, a couple of months. And we were told by our case worker to hire our own attorney, go for guardianship and be completely done with DCFS. That was the only information that we were told.

UNKNOWN:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03:

Then you were on your own, and you were trying to pay for everything and manage the medical care and health needs and everything.

SPEAKER_02:

That's exactly what happened. We were not told, and we had never dealt with GCFS. We didn't know anything about it. We were not told that we would have had an option to, and I believe now you can even just take the classes online and become a foster grandparent to him. And he would have been able to continue to have his services. We would have been able to continue to utilize that. And then when we got to the point of adoption, DCFS would have helped with the funds for that and the legal counsel. We didn't receive any of that. And one of the challenges that we had, because Jaden saw a lot of specialists, we had to make sure that he was covered by insurance. And when I gave the example of making five phone calls and getting five different answers, that's my personal example because I made more than five phone calls to try to get a confirmation on the medical insurance for him. And I could not. I could not get a definitive answer that wasn't We adopted him. Could he remain on state insurance? Could he remain with his doctors? I could not get a definitive answer. So we put him on private insurance, which we continue to do. And we pay$6,000 a year for his premium for that insurance.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, my goodness.

SPEAKER_02:

To make sure that he could continue to see those specialists. Now, most grandparents, a lot, are on a fixed income.

SPEAKER_05:

They're

SPEAKER_02:

retired. Many of them do go back to work a little bit to have a little bit of extra because of all the extras that's needed. As we had said, the grandparents are saving the state probably millions of dollars. And they're not getting, the majority of them are not getting any benefits which would be paid out to a total stranger that had that child in their home for foster care. And quite bluntly, the foster care system is terrible. The children get inadequate care. You know, there's, I mean, we hear about it. We read about it all the time. Not all foster situations, but many, many, many foster situations are not good. And You know, all the research proves it's much more beneficial for a child to be raised with relatives of some sort than just with strangers. And, you know, and that's what the grandparents are doing. They're giving them a safe, loving, you know, unconditional loving home.

SPEAKER_04:

And

SPEAKER_02:

they're trying to meet their needs. As a child, with all the medical and everything else that any other child gets, with Jaden, there's times when I don't want to go to that loud, fun zone for a birthday party. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

You should be done with that at this point.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right. But when you take on the responsibility of that child, you take on everything that comes with it. And as they grow, they are in a lot of activities and you're sitting out in the cold at soccer games and baseball games. And you

SPEAKER_03:

want them to have all those typical child experiences. And that's important, but it gets harder and harder as we, you know, are getting to different stages of life and we don't want to be doing that anymore. I totally get that. Right. Yes. And like you said, the medical experience, issues are so challenging if you don't have the support of state Medicaid and the state is basically should be responsible for these kids. These are our kids. These are state kids who are wards of the state if they're in DCFS. And there is insurance that should be provided called All Kids that they should be able to get until they're adults. And that would really help. Like you said, grandparents are on a fixed income, should not be paying for private insurance. So I'm sorry that that situation happened to you guys, but I'm glad that you're able to tell your story and to advise other grandparents to look into getting, you know, support through the Department of Child and Family Services and Medicaid to get that health insurance covered. That's such a big issue.

SPEAKER_02:

It is a big issue. And that's why, you know, several of us that are in the support group, like we kind of say, like, you know, it's too late for us. You know, we've been through this. We have full adoption. Once you do that, you lose any kind of services you had at all. You take sole responsibility. But we continue to do this work because we want to help those that are just coming into this situation. Right. We want to give them as much information as possible and support them and kind of walk with them through it. We will go with people for their emergency guardianship. You know, we'll go with them to the school, whatever, you know, whatever they need. One of us needs to be available to assist.

SPEAKER_03:

It's that, yeah, having an advocate to go with you to these kinds of appointments is so critical. That really helps. Just having another person to weigh in on things, to hear what you're hearing and help you interpret it, and somebody who knows the system already. It's unfortunate that you have to do that to make things work, but It is so valuable. So this sounds like just such a great resource that you're providing in both of these support, the support group and the legislative committee making changes legislatively as well. So it really helps to hear your story, Cherie. I appreciate you sharing and hope that this helps someone else on their journey as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Like I said, we just we want to get the information out there. The more people that know about it, you know, they may not be in this situation, but, you know, maybe their sister is right or their neighbor. So just, you know, share, keep the information and just back your head there and share it whenever you run across somebody. My husband met a lady at the grocery store. She's one of the cashiers and they just started talking. He had Jaden with him one day and, you know, this is my grandson. And she's like, oh, I'm raising my granddaughter. Boom. There

SPEAKER_03:

you go. Right. Wonderful. Yep, that's right. We're asking all our listeners to help spread the word and get the information out there. Check out our show notes and see the resources that are there. So thank you so much for being here, Cherie.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for listening to The Age Guide, Perspectives on the Aging Journey. We hope you learned something new on this podcast because we all have a stake in promoting a high quality of life for people on their aging journey. Age Guide coordinates and administers many services for older adults in Northeastern Illinois. We serve DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will Counties. Our specially trained professionals are available to answer questions and connect you with local service providers and resources. If you are interested in these services or want to learn more, go to our website at ageguide.org. Call our offices at 630-293-5990. Please follow our podcasts so when we post our monthly podcast, you are notified on your streaming account. Thank you, and we will see you next time on The Age Guide, Perspectives on the Aging Journey. Before this episode signs off, we were able to interview Jaden right as he came home from school. We wanted to share a quick clip of him talking about living with his grandparents.

SPEAKER_03:

How about I have another question for you. Can you tell me one thing that you like best about living with your grandma and grandpa?

SPEAKER_04:

No. Take me out to eat a lot.

SPEAKER_03:

Take you out to eat? Yes. Take you out to eat. Is your grandma a good cook, too? Yes. Yeah, she makes you yummy things.

SPEAKER_02:

What's your favorite thing? Your banana

SPEAKER_04:

pudding.

SPEAKER_02:

Banana pudding.

SPEAKER_04:

Your chili.

SPEAKER_02:

Chili,

SPEAKER_04:

yeah. Your tacos.

SPEAKER_03:

Tacos.

SPEAKER_04:

Everything.

SPEAKER_03:

You guys have some good meals over there. I'm coming over for dinner. That sounds delicious. Well, thank you for talking to us, Jaden. It was really nice to meet you along with your grandma today. I feel special getting to meet both of you. What do you

SPEAKER_02:

say? Thank you.