Second Time Around: What Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Need to Know

It rarely happens on a timeline anyone chose. A phone call, a hospital visit, a caseworker at the door, and a grandparent who expected to be planning a trip or helping occasionally with babysitting is suddenly raising a child full-time again. 

Nationally, more than 2.4 million children are being raised by grandparents or other relatives, most often because a parent couldn't safely continue in that role. It's a bigger, more common situation than most people realize, and it comes with real legal, financial, and emotional questions that deserve straight answers, not just sympathy.

When You're the Parent Again, But Not on Paper

One of the first walls a grandparent hits is discovering that love and daily care don't automatically come with legal authority. Enrolling a grandchild in school, authorizing a doctor's visit, or signing a permission slip can all get complicated fast if there's no custody order or guardianship in place.

Virginia does make room for this reality. Under Code of Virginia § 22.1-3, a child can attend public school for free while living with a relative providing "kinship care," even without a formal custody order, though the school division may ask for a notarized affidavit and a power of attorney authorizing educational decisions. 

Medical consent is less clearly resolved by statute, which is exactly why many kinship caregivers work with an attorney to put a simple medical power of attorney in place early, rather than after an ER visit makes the gap obvious. For situations where a grandparent needs broader, court-recognized authority, our guide to guardianship in Virginia walks through what that formal process actually involves.

The Financial Side Nobody Warns You About

Raising a grandchild on a fixed retirement income is a genuinely different math problem than raising your own kids was decades earlier. Fortunately, there are financial supports built specifically around this situation, not the same programs designed for young parents.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) "child-only" grants are based solely on the child's income, not the grandparent's, and aren't subject to the time limits that apply to family TANF grants. Virginia also offers additional support layered on top of the base grant in many localities, including Henrico County. 

Beyond TANF, it's worth asking a local Department of Social Services office about kinship-specific guardianship subsidies, and whether the grandchild qualifies for Social Security benefits based on a parent's work record. None of these programs are widely advertised, so caregivers often have to ask directly rather than wait to be told they qualify.

The Emotional Weight of Starting Over

The financial and legal pieces are solvable with the right information. The emotional toll is harder to plan for, and it's real: a peer-reviewed study of custodial grandparents found 41% scored in the clinically depressed range, at a stage of life when many peers are simplifying their households, not adding a child to them. 

The same research found one factor made the biggest measurable difference: social support from family members significantly lowered depression scores. Isolation, not the caregiving itself, is often what turns a hard situation into an unsustainable one.

This kind of caregiving load can look a lot like what we describe in our piece on sandwich generation caregiving, except often without a spouse in the same generation to share the load, and without the years of preparation a parent has when they know a baby is coming. 

It's also worth pausing to ask a harder question: while you're the one everyone depends on right now, do your own plans, like a power of attorney for yourself or an updated emergency information record, still reflect your current situation? Many grandparents raising grandchildren realize there's no longer an obvious "next generation" backup if something happens to them, which makes having their own paperwork in order more urgent, not less.

You're Not Doing This Alone

Richmond and Henrico County have real, usable local support for kinship families, including support groups specifically for grandparents raising grandchildren through local Area Agencies on Aging, and caseworkers at the Department of Social Services who can walk through benefit eligibility in person rather than over a hold line. 

Our Henrico senior services guide is built around navigating exactly this kind of local system, and it's worth using even when the person needing support is a grandchild rather than the grandparent.

When Two Generations Need Support at Once

Here's the situation that doesn't get talked about enough: some of the grandparents raising a grandchild full-time are, at the very same time, trying to figure out care for their own aging spouse or parent. 

Starting parenthood over and starting a caregiving journey for an older loved one can land in the same year, sometimes the same month. The Berkeley understands that families rarely deal with just one transition at a time. 

Whether that means exploring assisted living for an aging spouse so a grandparent can focus more fully on the grandchild now in their care, or simply having someone to talk it through, reach out to our team — no pressure, no obligation, just a conversation with people who understand how complicated real families actually are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is there a difference between kinship care and formal foster care for grandparents?

A: Yes. Kinship care generally refers to informal or voluntary arrangements a family sets up on its own, while foster care through a grandparent involves the local department of social services and comes with different oversight, requirements, and sometimes different financial support than informal kinship arrangements.

Q: Can a grandparent get Social Security benefits for a grandchild they're raising?

A: In some cases, yes. A grandchild may qualify for benefits based on a parent's Social Security work record, particularly if a parent has died or become disabled, and it's worth asking the Social Security Administration directly rather than assuming ineligibility.

Q: Do grandparents raising grandchildren qualify for the same tax benefits as parents?

A: Often, yes, if the grandchild meets IRS dependency requirements, which can include benefits like the Child Tax Credit. Eligibility depends on factors like how long the child has lived with the grandparent and who provides the majority of financial support, so this is worth confirming with a tax professional familiar with kinship situations.

Q: What happens if the grandchild's parent wants to resume custody later?

A: This depends heavily on the type of arrangement in place. Informal kinship care generally allows a parent to resume custody more easily than situations involving a court-ordered guardianship, which is one more reason it's worth understanding the legal category your family is actually operating under, not just assuming.

Sources

• Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network (Generations United), Virginia GrandFacts State Fact Sheet — https://www.grandfamilies.org/Portals/0/Virginia%20GrandFacts%20State%20Fact%20Sheet%202021%20Update.pdf
• Code of Virginia § 22.1-3, Persons to Whom Public Schools Shall Be Free — https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacodefull/title22.1/
• Lee & Jang, "Mental Health of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: Understanding Predictors of Grandparents' Depression," Innovation in Aging / GSA — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6840310/
• VirginiaNavigator, Grandparent and Kinship Care Supports — https://virginianavigator.org/taxonomy/program-type/grandparent-and-kinship-care-supports
• Administration for Children and Families (HHS), financial assistance for relative caregivers — https://acf.gov/cb/faq/grandparent-rights2