Jonesboro, AR (JonesboroRightNow.com) Sept. 13, 2024 – Grandparents across Arkansas are facing all new challenges as they raise their grandchildren with little to no help from the state. However, Arkansas Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (AGRG) is working to change that and provide support in any way that they can.
AGRG administrator Amy Muchia-Beckett, of Jonesboro, said her partner, AGRG administrator LaDeana Biddle, of Hope, started the Facebook group about eight years ago.
Muchia-Beckett said she joined the Facebook group five years ago, after taking in her second grandchild, who had just been born, when her daughter suffered a traumatic brain injury due to domestic violence.
She said she knew the hardships those grandparents faced, and, with the group, Muchia-Beckett knew that she was not alone in the struggle.
“Many of them had basically the same or even worse stories than I did,” she said.
One such grandparent, who wished to remain anonymous due to an ongoing court battle, recalled how she got custody of her grandchildren. Her daughter was living with her boyfriend, who was a level two sex offender and very abusive to her and the children.
He was just one of her daughter’s many abusive relationships and marriages she had been in over the years. However, when the DHS (Department of Human Services) found out about the mother’s boyfriend, it swiftly removed the children from her custody, crashing a family event at the grandparents’ home to do so.
As for the biological father, he was a drug addict. Both children’s parents agreed they were unfit and signed over custody to the grandparents. However, some years later, the grandmother found out her daughter had been stealing their child support, having stolen over $15,000.
“She has never paid for any school supplies, clothes, or anything, and I couldn’t even get benefits because I own a business. We can’t even get food stamps or reduced school lunches, but their mother has been drawing food stamps on them the whole time as well,” she said. “I told her she should give the money from that point to the kids. They had savings accounts that I had started for them.”
Unwilling to give up the money, the daughter has filed to get custody back. She began harassing the grandparents and the children, such as messaging the children with threats of taking her own life, causing public spectacles at the children’s club and school events, and even stalking the grandparents and posting videos on social media before they even knew they’d been followed.
“The children are terrified of her at this point,” the grandmother said.
After multiple court battles, the grandmother said she could have paid for a house with as much as she had spent on lawyer fees. However, thanks to the support of the group she continues to make it through.
“The grandparents group helps so much,” she said, noting their resources for those who need information and legal advice.
“The only way I know as much as I do is because of them. You can post anonymously if you need and just get things off your chest. Everyone is very empathic and sympathetic because they understand what you are going through. You hear the same stories all over the AGRG page,” she said, adding how lucky she was to be able to afford everything. “Is the money worth it? Yes, because I feel I have saved these kids. However, many of the other grandparents can’t afford the battle because they are on fixed incomes or disabled and they lose their grandkids to the foster system. You feel like you have no life and no help. If it wasn’t for my church family and the AGRG, I think I would probably go crazy sometimes.”
Another grandmother, who remained anonymous as she was still in court battles, struggles financially as and her husband are disabled. They are taking care of their two disabled step-grandchildren, one of whom has a fatal illness and is not expected to make it to adulthood.
Although she has had them since birth, she has only had custody for a few years. Both parents were addicts. The mother would leave them with various people and one of her ex-boyfriends locked them in a dark closet for days and burnt one of them, which lead to the children being removed from the home and the step-grandparents fostering them.
The father, who had been the grandmother’s stepson, finally signed over custody as he did not want to have anything to do with them, however the mother is still allowed visitations.
“My grandkids are loved and spoiled. They call me Mommy and my husband Daddy,” she said, noting that they were thriving, played sports and got straight A’s despite their disabilities. “My biggest fear is that the lawyer will call and say we have to go back to court.”
She said that the AGRG group helps with resources grandparents can’t get from the government.
“Getting help from the state is ridiculous,” she said. “They get child support and disabilities, but that’s it. The state makes it impossible to get any other help.”
She also noted that although their house and land was paid off when she took her grandkids in, they have already had to sell part of their land to make ends meet.
“The group is very supportive, but we do need some help from the state. We didn’t ask for this,” she said.
Which is why Muchia-Beckett stepped up to help the group about a year ago, when the AGRG Facebook group had begun to go almost dormant with about 40 members and not much activity.
She still remembered a post Biddle had made, stating her health had gotten bad and asking if anybody would be willing to take over the site and help her grow the group. If not, she was going to have to be done with the group.
“I saw it and I thought, okay, I’ll find another group, but that night, God was like, ‘Come on, you can do better than that,’” she recalled. “I decided, ‘Okay, I’ll give it a try’.”
Although Muchia-Beckett said she had no idea what she was going to do, she knew their main goal, which was and still is sharing advice and experiences, while helping to find grandparents the resources they need to survive.
“I’ve become great at finding resources,” she said. “We have a lot of grandparents that have a lot of needs. Because they’re older, they’ve accumulated things, such as 401Ks, homes and stuff like that. So, they don’t qualify for assistance through the state.”
“We find resources, whether it be to help pay an electric bill or to get Target to donate a box of diapers to somebody who needs them because when some people get their grandkids, they have nothing for them at all,” Muchia-Beckett said.
The group is working on the 501(c)(3) to become a nonprofit organization to help with funding. Muchia-Beckett added that they were also working with Senator Dan Sullivan to get a bill passed called the Independent Child Nutrition Act, which she said will allow any guardians, not just grandparents, in the state to apply for SNAP benefits.
It will be based solely on the child’s income, not the guardians, which is beneficial to their group because a lot of the grandparents must give up everything they worked for at their retirement, she said, noting that some have had to give up their retirement-plans and homes if they wanted to get any help.
“I actually have a grandparent that I was working with that’s considering giving her two grandsons to foster care because she just can’t see a long-term path to take care of them,” Muchia-Beckett explained. “That’s where we step in and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Let’s see what other options we have. What can we do to get you some help in your area? What can we do to keep those kids there?’ Because a lot of these kids come in and they’re already traumatized. We have grandparents who maybe lost their adult children to accidents or illness.”
Muchia-Beckett added that grandparents were deeply affected by the drug epidemic, because some of their adult children became addicted to drugs/alcohol or put in the prison system.
According to the United States Census Bureau, nationally in 2021, of the 6.7 million grandparents (30 years and over) who lived with grandchildren, 31.3%, or 2.1 million, had primary responsibility for them, meaning that they were responsible for their grandchild’s basic needs.
Arkansas was above that national average and 49.6%, or about 35,000, of the 70,596 grandparents living with grandchildren having the primary responsibility for their grandchildren.
“That’s the ones that actually just have custody through the courts,” Muchia-Beckett said. “You’d be amazed at how many people don’t have that actual court document that are raising their grandkids and the reason they do it that way is the biological parents might not want to sign over.”
“They don’t want to get DHS involved because sometimes DHS will say, ‘Okay, we’re going to put the kids in foster care but then we’re going to let you foster them’ and they end up getting lost in the system. Then, the grandparents don’t ever see their grandkids. That system is incredibly broken,” she said, noting that for every one child in Arkansas who’s in foster care, there are four children living with grandparents.
The group works with an anonymous attorney who helps with legal advice.
“If you have court dates, we offer to go to court with you and help you try to navigate that system, whether it be through DHS… you might be seeking an emergency custody petition… or you might have a biological parent trying to get their child back. We always offer to go to court,” Muchia-Beckett said.
Muchia-Beckett said the group finds resources such as car seats and provides clothing donations from AGRG’s clothes closet, which keeps a variety of sizes for those in need.
“We love our grandkids, but there are a lot of stigmas,” Muchia-Beckett said. “It is a hard job that has many challenges, but it is also rewarding. We’re a little bit older, a little bit wiser, but no matter how we came to get our grandkids, a lot of us faced just the same situations.”
For example, she said walking into a classroom and being the oldest people present can be awkward, as many grandparents don’t quite relate to the 20-something-year-olds, which is why they have created their own community.
“Just don’t give up. It gets easier and you’re not alone,” Muchia-Beckett said. “There’s so many of us out there. You’re not alone. There is help.”
The Facebook group is private and requires potential members to answer four or five questions to join. If those questions are not answered, the person will be denied entry.
“We must keep our group members safe. We must make sure that biological parents don’t get in there or other family members,” Muchia-Beckett said. “When you apply for the group, we’re not going to respond right away because we’re going to check you out on Facebook for a minute and see that you are who you’re saying you are, and you’re doing what you say you’re going to do because we must make sure our members are safe. The group is their place where they can vent and say whatever is on their mind or heart that day.”
However, she also noted that if someone is not comfortable asking for help through the Facebook group, they can always fill out an assistance form on the AGRG page and email it back to them.
In the last year, the group has grown to 145 members and with that growth comes new challenges, such as helping as many families as possible at Christmas time.
Luckily, Muchia-Beckett said there were places like Rhea Lana’s Consignment that donates whatever is left over after certain sales events to different groups and foster and military families.
“The past two years, they’ve included our group,” she said. “Especially around Christmas time, a lot of people will let our group do different events, either free or at half price. Plus, we always ask people for toys because we have a lot of grandkids that don’t get Christmas without us.”
However, Muchia-Beckett said their annual Christmas toy and fundraiser had to be canceled this year due to Biddle’s declining health.
For more information or to donate, contact Arkansas Grandparents Raising Grandchildren on Facebook or via email at arkgrandsraisinggrandkids@gmail.com or abeckett0176@gmail.com.