Welcome to the Grandmothers Caring for their Grandchildren Research Project website. This three year research project (2001-2004) is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The goal of our project is to collect the stories of grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren on a full or part time basis. While there has been limited research on this topic, some previous studies have found that when parents are unable to raise their children, they often turn to their families to provide care for their children. Grandmothers are frequently the family members who provide this care. Some of the previous research (see our selected bibliography) cites studies that document and describe the family situations that lead to the involvement of grandmothers in this work.

We hope that, by documenting stories of grandmothers in the Vancouver Island area, we will contribute to local and national public debates and discussions about the nature of the caring work done by grandmothers to keep families connected. We also hope to challenge how it is often assumed and expected that grandmothers will replace parents as caregivers with minimal financial resources and services.

Our research involves both individual and focus group interviews designed to hear the voices of a wide range of grandmothers, including those who are poor, of diverse ethnic groups and from First Nations communities. We are also examining present services and policies and documenting the way social services and public policies may help and/or hinder the work of grandmothers.

Policy forums with members of the professional community who work in child welfare and family support services will also help us to identify strengths and gaps in social and child welfare policies and practices and make recommendations for change. We will be posting our findings on this website from time to time as well as presenting our research at conferences and in journal articles. We intend to write a book as our final report that will capture the stories of grandmothers and articulate the implications of these stories for social policy, family theory and professional practice.