VISTA -- Cynthia Villarreal knew when she married her husband that his two teenage daughters would be moving in with them.

What she didn't anticipate was the phone call they received from Child Protective Services asking them to take care of another child, the one from her husband's other teenage daughter who became pregnant at 15.

Their mother was unable to take care of them and Villarreal's grandchildren were being "shuffled around and left with whoever was willing to watch them," Villarreal said.

The process of gaining guardianship of their grandchildren meant being assigned an adoption social worker to handle the placement of the children and filling out paperwork; having to undergo background checks on their finances, home safety, and relationship; and having the parental rights of the biological parents terminated.

According to the 2005 American Community Survey, the Villarreals are just two of 17,000 grandparents who are responsible for raising their grandchildren in San Diego County, and that figure does not take into account the thousands of undeclared guardians raising grandchildren without full custody.

For grandparents like the Villarreals, the Kinship Care Program offers guidance about their rights, roles and support system. The program operates throughout San Diego County under the wing of YMCA Youth and Family Services and North County Lifeline.

Similar situations

Kinship Care coordinator Denise Turrubiate said the cornerstone of the support program is a weekly get-together for the guardians and children held at more than a dozen locations in the county. She said it's helpful for people who find themselves with the same questions and concerns to meet each other.

"This is a situation that defies everything, whether you are rich or poor, black or white, if you were raised Christian or Jewish," Turrubiate said. "Here, they come together and find themselves in the same situation."

Although some, like the Villarreals, have been asked by Child Protective Services to become guardians, Denise says that "90 percent of my workload is informal cases," meaning grandparents have answered a call to pick up the children or they have been baby-sitting and found the children have been abandoned. One of the participants, Pam Bordeaux, said, "Our daughter said she was going to go to a party for the night, but she didn't come back for a year. We didn't see her. There was no contact."

For many, these experiences are not openly discussed and Kinship participants are worried that they will be seen as failing the children if they ask for help.

But Bordeaux said that one of the things Kinship has taught her is that, "You are strong if you understand that you need help because you don't fully understand what is going on.

"When they first encounter the group, they may get embarrassed and be scared to tell their story. They may say, 'My kid was into drugs,' and are relieved when we raise our hands to show that this is what happened to us as well."

'You are a saint'

Although participants may feel embarrassed about their situation, many of the grandparents find praise from those close to them.

"People think you are a saint, but you just step in where you are needed," Bordeaux said.

Another grandparent, Peggy Maddocks, said, "I get it all the time, 'I don't know how you can do it.' But you just do; what else are you going to do?"

Bordeaux had 13 children and tells how her daughter "was picked up for numerous situations -- drugs, forgery, you name it, she was trying to do it."

"When she was incarcerated the last time, she asked me if we would take the kids."

That was 11 years ago. Peggy now has full legal guardianship of her grandchildren, Willy and Ashley, and she has the right to keep their parents from seeing them. "The judge told us when we got guardianship that (their mother) is not to be in the house, she cannot be around the children alone," Bordeaux said.

Their mother has not contacted them for the past five years.

Parenting a second time

Parenting is difficult, and for a lot of the people in this group it was the last thing they thought they would be doing again. They didn't think they would have to pick up kids from school, buy them clothes of help with homework.

"They want to be grandparents and they don't get a chance to do that," Turrubiate said.

"The parents sometimes get to come in and go to the movies and we are the ones that are saying, 'You have to get your homework done, you have to get up in the morning,'" Bordeaux said. "So we have the parental roles and have lost the grandparent roles."

Grandparents aren't the only ones getting a lot of support from this group. So are the kids. Although they are brought to the group by their grandparents, a lot of them agreed the children are the ones who end up pestering their grandparents to not miss Kinship meetings. They get a chance to play with kids without having to explain their situation. Many of the kids have emotional and attachment problems due to their upbringing.

"Due to privacy laws," Turrubiate explains, "many grandparents cannot be part of family therapy that would help them understand how their grandkids are feeling."

One of the services recommended by Kinship is a program at Grossmont College that deals with these issues.

"We are doing a session now on how to care for the hurt child," Bordeaux said. Through Kinship and its programs, they learn to "raise these children to become very functioning adults."

Practical issues

Kinship is not only about emotional support, but also about the practicality of raising grandchildren. Guardians get help with finding funding, getting respite care, and receiving legal advice regarding custody and power of attorney.

Some grandparents are often classed as volunteer caregivers, depriving them of funds and other services given to foster parents.

"Sometimes they have the kids for years until they find out that they can get some form of funding," Turrubiate said of the options Kinship shows participants.

Housing situations many need to change, too. Aurora Corrizal was in senior housing when she took in three grandsons, Nicolas, 12, Ryan, 10, and Tyler, 8. She had to find a bigger house. Aurora was named "Grandparent of the Year" by Kinship North County in 2005.

On the Net:

http://www.fakce.org/