“My second mum and dad” - Grandparents Plus

Chapter 6
The impact of grandparental
involvement on adolescent well-being
Existing evidence
Research on grandparental full-time care (‘kinship care’), presents a
mixed picture of the benefits for children, possibly because of the unusual
circumstances in which this takes place 6.1 . Despite the lack of support for
grandparents in this role researchers have found that the vast majority of
kinship care placements were found to be positive for the child 6.2 . In the
US, studies have shown significant emotional and general health problems
amongst grandchildren being raised by their grandparents 6.3 . These findings
largely relate to young children. But this is likely to be a function of
deprivation as levels of poverty amongst these grandparents are high.
In the UK, very recent research 6.4 comparing outcomes for toddlers in both formal
care (nurseries/playgroups) and grandparental care found that children under
grandparental care had the worst behavioural scores. In a study of 385 children
from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, children were asked how
close they were to grandparents and given a four-point scale on which to base their
assessment, whilst the child behaviour checklist (CBCL) measured child adjustment.
At the first time point when children were on average nine years old there was an
association between grandparental closeness and child adjustment, but five years
later when the young people were on average 14 years old there was not.
Unfortunately, there was no indication of what the grandparents actually did for,
or with, their grandchildren and the age range was particularly wide 6.5 .
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