I sent this to both Hillary and Obama asking them to take a good look at our issue. If anyone else wants to send something, maybe if enough of us contact them, it might get them to at least consider us an 'issue'. Here's what I wrote:

I know that you are busy with your campaign now, but, after the election, I am asking that you please take a look at an issue that is near and dear to many the plight of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren.

Those of us in that situation feel as though we are the victims of emotional blackmail. The agencies know that we love our grandchildren and will do almost anything to keep them rather than allowing them go into the foster care system, so we are given no resources, no assistance, and are left to fend for ourselves as best we can. A stranger who would take the children, on the other hand, is given an abundance of financial and other support.

I saw an ad in our local newspaper offering foster parents a signing bonus, economic support of $1,800 per month per child, respite care, and many other services. My husband and I, who are raising our grandson, receive $215 per month from Kinship Care, and to receive that, we must fill out an insulting form titled Invoice for Services every month and mail it to the agency. The system is designed to make you feel so guilty for begging for money to take care of your grandchild that you do not even bother to ask for the money. At least we do not have daycare now that our grandson is 14 years old. For the first twelve years, the Kinship money only covered about 20% of the cost of daycare. Of course, we will soon have a teen driver and huge insurance increases that will likely make daycare seem like a bargain.

When our grandson was born, we were financially unable to afford another child. Because our daughter was not yet 18 years old when she had her baby, per Wisconsin State law, we were financially responsible for one-half of his expenses until our daughter was 18 years old. At least that is what the law states we were legally responsible for one-half of his expenses, but no one could tell us where we were supposed to get the other one-half from. Since we received no assistance from any agency, the State had no incentive to try to collect child support from his 21 year-old father. So, our 15 year old daughter, the victim of statutory rape, was taken advantage of by a 21-year-old man, and my husband and I will be financially devastated for the rest of our lives by the expenses for raising their child. Our daughter was not emotionally ready to parent a child and chose to give us legal guardianship and have us provide the stable home that she could not, so he has been with us since his birth.

After his birth, we learned a lot of things very quickly, such as our daughters having a sick child is not an excused absence from school. Since I had used all my vacation time when he was born, our daughter had to take her son to the Sick Child Daycare Center where the fees were more than double that of a regular daycare center. When I spoke to a County agency asking if there was any help available for our grandson and saying that we could not afford the daycare expenses, I was told that we were legally obligated to send our daughter to school and we either had to find the money to pay for our grandsons daycare or we would be arrested and jailed for allowing our daughter to be truant. So, I emptied my pension fund from work and my husband worked his full-time job, an additional part-time job, and sold blood twice a week to pay for our grandsons expenses. Can I begin to tell you how nice it would have been to have the same benefits that a stranger raising our grandson would have been given rather than being treated like a criminal?

And, being grandparents raising grandchildren, we find ourselves isolated and sometimes very over-burdened. We have no one to ask for help with anything. In addition to raising our grandson, working full time and trying to re-build my pension, we are caring for our parents. My mother, who died last year, had a hereditary illness and my father cared for her at home for several years, with my help. For several years before her death, I went to my parents house in the morning before work to help care for my mother, dropped my grandson at daycare, worked all day, picked my grandson up from daycare, cared for him, and then after he was in bed for the night and my husband came home from his second job, went back to my parents for another two hours to help care for my mother. I do all of my dads paperwork, pay most of his bills for him, and I am now helping care for my brother who is disabled by the same disease that killed our mother. Not only do I have no help, I am most other peoples help. For several years I used an entire week of vacation time each year meeting with agencies for paperwork to get my father the help he needed to care for my mother plus the two required visits with social workers for my grandson so he could receive medical assistance and we could receive our $215 per month from Kinship.

We are by no means unique. Most other grandparents raising their grandchildren are in the same type of situation. We are raising grandchildren, working full time, and caring for aging parents. We have no friends because even if we would have time or energy to socialize, we have nothing in common with other people our age. They are going on cruises while we are going to parent-teacher conferences. We all have felt the guilt of not being able to treat our grandchildren equitably. We cannot buy our other grandchildren whom we are not raising a small treat like an ice cream cone because the one were raising just outgrew his shoes. There is not one of us who does not feel the devastating economic affects of supporting our grandchildren that will haunt us the rest of our lives. We are all spending money that we should be putting aside for retirement to support our grandchildren, and many of us will either never be able to retire or we will live our golden years in poverty because of it. All we are asking for is that grandparents raising their grandchildren be given the same consideration as anyone else caring for a child that is not their own.

So, if you would please take a good look at the plight of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren and find a fair solution, I would be very grateful. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me.