Also of interest....
According to Clarke and Cairns , in 2001, 1% of grandparents living in the UK had grandchildren living with them on a permanent basis.
A modified Mellow Parenting group was run in Aberdeen for grandmothers caring for grandchildren. Seven families in which children were being looked after by their grandparents had been referred to the Family Centre as a direct result of the children’s challenging or severely challenging behaviour.
However, from the onset, it became evident that a high proportion of the families’ problems were extremely complex, and, in general, historical. For example, each of the grandmothers had experienced:
- Emotional and/or physical abuse as children.
- Difficulty in establishing and maintaining positive adult relationships.
- Difficulty in parenting their own children.
Two out of the four families who agreed to join the group had experienced domestic violence in addition to the death of one of their children as a direct result of a drugs overdose.