Many grandparents who intervene to care for their grandchildren because of their children’s drug addiction are being put in a Catch 22 situation by the State.New research has found that if the grandparents step in before a legal care order is made, child protection services will not grant them a foster care allowance.
The study has warned that the provision of integrated services to these families by child care services and addiction services may worsen further with the removal of child protection services into a new body outside the HSE.
The research was conducted by Megan O’Leary of the National Family Support Network and Shane Butler, associate professor of social policy at Trinity College Dublin. The study, published in the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, found that grandparents intervene because they are “no longer able to tolerate the level of neglect” by their own drug-addicted children.
Source: Cormac O'Keefe, Irish Examiner, 23/03/2016
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