Once a year, on a summer weekend at Augusta University, volunteers gather to give some families much-needed relief as the new school year starts. It’s par for the course for a community service that has continued for 22 years.
The AU College of Nursing started the Healthy Grandparents Program in January 1999 to assist grandparents and great-grandparents who are caring for children of parent-absent homes in Richmond and Columbia counties.
“The primary goal of the program is to provide a variety of support services to grandparent caregivers, while assisting them to provide their grandchildren with a stable and supportive home environment without having to enter and/or re-enter the formal foster care system,” says the program’s website.
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Services include pediatric physicals, child custody and adoption assistance, child enrichment scholarships and access to various resources for support, education and advocacy.
One of the program’s signature community events is its annual Book Bag give-away. Volunteers from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship met in front of the Augusta University’s Health Sciences Building Saturday morning to distribute book bags packed with school supplies to families in the program.
Book bags for children in pre-K through 12th grade are purchased or received via donations, and they’re filled with age-appropriate items. Grandparents in the program receive pictures of the book bags with a number so that they and the children can select the ones they want.
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“We’ll stuff them with glue sticks, markers, crayons, paper, notebooks, journals, scissors, pretty much anything they’re going to need to get the schoolyear started off,” said Mike Patton, program coordinator for the Healthy Grandparents program. “Then we bring them down here and lay them out, and they come pick them up.”
While the program is government-funded, it also accepts donations. Those donations go a long way in helping the program serve families receiving assistance. A significant donor this year was the City of Augusta’s IT department. That department donated enough book bags and school supplies to distribute to 50 children.
“That just kind of fell out of the sky,” said Patton. “I had no idea they were going to do as much as they did.”
Between the grant money and donations like those from the IT department, or from an annual contributor like the Columbia County Merchants Association, Healthy Grandparents was able this year to supply 155 children with book bags and supplies this year.
“The help and support we get from the community make a difference in whether we’re going to get 50 or 75 kids book bags and school supplies, or 155 like we did this year,” said Patton. “We’re limited in our funding. We get the same amount of funding every year, but we get more and more families into the program.”
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Patton notes that community generosity is what makes it possible to increase the number of families entering Healthy Grandparents this kind of generosity is paramount. Financial issues, he said, tend to be among the greatest stressors for grandparent caregivers.
“When you’re living on a fixed income and then all of a sudden, boom, you have two, three or four kids to take care of, those book bags and school supplies add up really quickly,” said Patton. “We have a number of grandparents that are raising four, five, six grandchildren. We have five families that have come by here today that have five or more grandchildren they’re trying to take care of.”
For some of the students in the CURS program who volunteered to help distribute book bags, both the event and the program represent an opportunity to serve and an occasion to honor their own family situations.
“I love what they’re doing. I love that they think about the grandparents,” said Jordan Locklin, a volunteer and kinesiology student who plans to go to PA school after she graduates in December. “My mother helps to take care of my sister’s kids over the summer. That’s something that people don’t really think about. Personally, all my cousins, their kids stay with their grandparents, so I see the need for it.”
“My grandparents are a big part of my life,” said Zyare Orr, a senior chemistry major with a concentration in medicinal chemistry. “I can only imagine them having to take care of their grandkids full time. So, as soon as I heard about this, right away I wanted to be in it. Also, just this summer I’ve been here the whole summer just trying to figure out things to do. We’re finally able to do things for the community.”
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While families are introduced to the program largely through referrals from agencies in the Augusta area, most of those involved heard about the program by word of mouth.
“We get a lot of referrals from juvenile court, DFCS, school systems, from the health department from the children’s hospital. We’ve gotten referrals from 50 different agencies in Richmond and Columbia counties,” said Patton. “But the majority of referrals come from grandparents who have already been in the program, meeting other grandparents at PTA meetings, at doctor visits, at church, other grandparents, just meeting other grandparents who are raising their grandchildren out in the community.”
The Healthy Grandparents program helps alleviate stress and gets children off to a good start for the new school year, Patton said.
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“It helps alleviate the stress off the grandparents, tries to get the grandkids off to a good start for the academic school year, especially after the last year and a half,” said Patton. “You see the kids excited to get the book bag they want. They’re excited to see what’s in the book bags, and it puts me in the good frame of mind to start the schoolyear off right. Although this is a small, little thing, anything we can do to try to help the grandparents just take a little stress off, we’re happy to do it. For them it’s a little bit more important.”
Information on the Healthy Grandparents Program Grandparents can be found at its website at https://www.augusta.edu/nursing/community-engagement/hgp.php. Grandparents and great-grandparents interested in the program can reach Mike Patton at 706-721-6227, or his email at mpatton@augusta.edu..
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter with The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
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