LOST CREEK – After her son was grown, police would wake Judy Utley in the middle of the night and ask her to take in her two grandchildren and their two half-siblings. 

After a few months with her, they’d go back to their parents. 

“Six months down the road, they were back at my house in the middle of the night, barefoot with no clothes,” Utley said.

Even though the kids were repeatedly dropped off there, she could never be fully ready. 

Clothes she had purchased them six months before no longer fit. And Utley, who lives in Harrison County, couldn’t afford to quickly meet all state requirements to keep them more permanently, like constructing an extra bedroom. 

In a state with desperate need for foster families, West Virginia officials frequently tout the high numbers of kids placed in kinship families, meaning in the care of grandparents, other relatives or close family friends. But relatives face more mental health strain than other caregivers, and state health officials don’t offer the extra assistance these caregivers need to help themselves and the children in their care heal.

On a moment’s notice, kinship families take in children who’ve been through traumatic events like abuse and neglect. Older caregivers, like grandparents,  are also more likely to face existing challenges, like living in poverty with their own health struggles. 

And grandparents are also likely to experience guilt and shame over their own children’s parenting failures, according to multiple studies and federal data. Those findings are compiled in a comprehensive report released in 2023 by the nonprofit group Generations United and its Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network.

At the end of December, the state had more than 3,000 kids in kinship foster care. But many grandparents are raising their grandchildren outside of the state’s system. In 2023, grandparents in 16,000 West Virginia households said they had responsibility for their grandchildren, according to the U.S. Census data. 

West Virginia state officials help kinship foster care families prepare to take on childrearing in three main ways: offering a training program that includes techniques for dealing with grief, loss and trauma-related behavior, giving financial assistance, and enrolling kids in Medicaid, which they can use for mental health and other health care treatment. 

Prospective foster parents, who open their homes through one of the state’s foster care agencies, have already participated in this intensive training and are eligible for financial assistance as soon as children are placed in their care.

But grandparents or kinship families haven’t had the training for the urgent situations they face. Instead, they receive a waiver for about $350 for immediate needs like clothing or bedding for each child. And they have to figure out how to get the state-required training, with those kids already in their care, before they become eligible for the subsidy foster parents regularly receive.

Utley would have a clean house with food in the refrigerator. But her income was stretched thin while caring for four kids, so she couldn’t afford more costly expenses required by state health officials, like replacing her water heater. But instead of helping her pay for it, child welfare workers would report the broken heater as a deficiency in her caregiving when determining whether to move the children.

Utley also comes from a family with multiple generations raised by grandparents – kids and grandkids who followed in their elders’ mental health and substance use problems footsteps.

“It wasn’t addressed by my grandparents,” she said. “It wasn’t addressed by my parents. It wasn’t addressed by me.”

According to Utley, the child welfare workers who visited her, and who faced overly large caseloads and understaffing, seemed more focused on “checking boxes” than offering help by making referrals to public benefit programs, charities, baby-sitters and mental health professionals.

She said if they focused on grandparents’ potential and their unmet needs, “they might see the actual human, and the actual situation.” 

Grandparents go without help

Now in her late 70s, Bonnie Dunn was raised by her grandparents. 

She said that from then to present day, the same problems have persisted, including tight budgets, stress and too few mental health providers in situations with grandparents unexpectedly caring for children who feel lost and unwanted. 

“The story hasn’t changed,” she said. “Except statistically, it’s worse.”

And now, grandparents face additional stressors like learning about safely using social media and worrying about the threat of the opioid epidemic. 

To help grandfamilies address their struggles, Dunn, of Kanawha County, helped launch the state’s Healthy Grandfamilies program through West Virginia State University, in 2016. But even then, she knew the program would only scratch the surface of the need. Dunn retired in 2022.

“I’m sure that West Virginia State University is still doing what they can do, but it’s got to be bigger and more concentrated,” she said. “Because it’s not going away.”

State lawmakers have allocated the program $800,000 per budget year for the last several years.

Where local programs are offered, organizers bring in health care providers to talk about stress, trauma and self-care. Grandfamilies are trained on using new technology and financial planning. They’re also offered informal support groups.

But not all areas have it. The program is only provided in about half of the state’s 55 counties. 

Melissa Lilly, director of the program, did not respond to interview requests, and Jack Bailey, university spokesperson, said programs with only a few participants don’t receive funding, only limited supplies like journals and teacher guides. He didn’t answer a question about the exact number of programs fully operating.

Before COVID-19, Wood County had an active Healthy Grandfamilies program, according to Denise Hughes, director of programming for the Children’s Home Society.

The Children’s Home Society and local Family Support Center played major roles. They held regular sessions, where grandparents learned about topics like healthy communication. 

The grandparents were also able to be part of support groups.

They found that other grandparents, too, were parenting grandchildren as they worried about their own children struggling with substance use disorders and grieved their children lost to overdoses.

“They all kind of commiserated, and they became such a good support for each other,” Hughes said.

But when COVID hit, virtual meetings were too difficult on grandparents, according to Hughes. And even before then, funding was lacking.

Now in Wood County, there are no grandfamilies meetings, but kinship caregivers and others in need can still get help from the Children’s Home Society and Family Support Center.

Without enough Healthy Grandfamilies programs statewide, Department of Human Services spokesperson Angel Hightower said state officials agree that families should reach out to Family Support Centers for help and to forge connections with other caregivers. She also said the agency’s Bureau for Family Assistance helps grandfamilies and other kinship caregivers with services like paying for auto repairs or clothing, as well as connecting families with educational opportunities like GED programs.

But according to Hughes, they can mainly only assist with material needs. With help from donations and grants, they’re able to offer supplies like diapers and clothes and help prevent evictions by paying for back rent or utilities.

In the county seat of Parkersburg, Cindy Cunningham had never heard of any programs aimed at supporting grandfamilies, although she does take her granddaughter, whom she is raising, to mental health treatment.

A multitude of research, referenced in a 2023 report on building resilience in children in grandfamilies, found that children involved in the child welfare system are more likely to act out because they need help after experiencing abuse or neglect and other scary experiences. Their resulting behaviors can result in emotional and physical stress for their grandparents.

Cunningham said her son lives two doors down from her, but she hasn’t talked to him in more than a year. Every once in a while she’ll see him getting in or out of his car.

“They live on the same side of the street, and it’s almost like they live in another town,” she said. “It’s really fragmented my family.”

But instead of seeking her own treatment, she’ll informally ask for a little time to talk to the psychologist first before her granddaughter’s sessions. 

She offers suggestions about problems at home that the psychologist and her granddaughter might discuss in their session. 

But those talks are still mainly focused on her granddaughter’s needs and safety – not hers.

She worries that if she seeks help, her granddaughter will be taken away.

“I know that kind of sounds silly,” she said. “But there’s always that fear.”

Consistent support makes a difference

Now a volunteer trainer for Harrison County’s Healthy Grandfamilies program, Utley helps families learn to communicate with abused or neglected kids who are always on edge without setting them off, and she gives grandparents an opportunity to share their frustrations.

She’s come a long way. She remembers what it was like living with repeated upheaval when she was a child. Every several months, her father went through another alcohol binge, and she’d be swiftly sent to her grandparents.

So eventually, Utley came to realize that like her, the grandchildren she was raising had learned to be on their guard to run or fight.

She had to gradually help one grandchild learn to sleep without her shoes on, because the child felt like she always had to be ready to leave without notice. 

Utley had frequent fights with another grandchild, before a child welfare worker and a neighbor helped them learn to separate until they calmed down. Then when they reconvened, they’d hold up make-shift mini-stop signs, made from popsicle sticks, giving each person time to talk without interruption.

“If we don’t know better, we don’t do better, and we don’t break the generational curse,” Utley said. 

Harrison County’s grandfamilies program is well-attended. Tammy Romano, the program’s social worker, said some people from other counties have turned to them for help.

That program is successful in part because it heavily relies on donations and partnerships, and also because like Utley, program workers recognize change takes time.

Twice a year, the local program in Harrison County provides 11 weeks of once-a-week training. They also offer informal support groups once a month. 

Harrison County receives about $10,000 per fiscal year from the state fund, so it’s also dependent on close partnerships with the United Way and the school system. School guidance counselors regularly refer families to Romano.

Without that community assistance, they wouldn’t have been able to serve the hundreds of grandfamilies who’ve sought help over the years.

Participants in the program have asked, “What made my child think that it was okay to get in all this trouble, do these drugs and bring their kids to me and take off? He wasn’t raised like that. What did I do wrong?”

While Romano is present during groups, she mostly just listens. The families decide among themselves what to talk about and encourage each other, in part by sharing that they’re experiencing the same emotions.

The Generations United report shows that when grandparents receive the emotional support and financial assistance they need to be a caregiver for kids who’ve been hurt, the children in their custody are more likely to grow into healthier adults with stable lives.

Romano noted that she has to build relationships with grandparents, though, before they trust her enough to share those painful feelings.

Like child welfare workers, Romano does home visits.

She sees that mental health help is much-needed, so she makes referrals to local treatment providers. 

“I haven’t seen anyone who says no.”  

Mountain State Spotlight is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on the collaborative include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.