OFF OUR ROCKERS
Off Our Rockers is a support group for grandparents raising grandchildren and grandparents without access.
As Pastor of our church and being a grandparent raising a grandchild I realised when we took on this role that there was no support out there for people in this situation.
Our church took on the vision of establishing support groups for grandparents. The first meeting was held at our church in Woodenbong, then started at Springwood in March 2000 followed by the Gold Coast and Lismore in Northern N.S.W.
Off Our Rockers is an arm of Cross Roads Ministries church in Woodenbong. N.S.W and was founded to reach out and support these grandparents.
Within the first few years over 300 grandparents have accessed the groups either by attendance or phone and we were in most cases able to initiate support from various community bodies.
The groups give grandparents the opportunity to meet with others in the same situation and be able to verbalise and share feelings and issues we all face. The emotional impact of coming to terms with the loss of a child for one reason or another and then repeating the parenting process when they are planning or in retirement has a tremendous impact on their lives. They are very much isolated from their peers and loneliness is a big issue.
Without the dedication of these grandparents the cost to Government would be enormous, one of our aims is to get more government recognition and support for the grandparents.
Issues being looked at by our groups are in areas of health, education and more financial assistance as many are on pensions.
The rapid growth of Off Our Rockers indicates the vast number in this as yet very unrecognised people group.
2011
We are pleased to be able to report the extent of the work that our original groups initiated.
Government bodies such as Centrelink, Family Support, Qld Law Society. Department of Families, have taken up the baton for our grandparents thus improving the issues they face.
Website such as Seniors Enquiry Line, Selfhelp Qld, Parentline and Commonwealth Carelink have our information on their data bases.
Many other groups have started right across the nation adding weight to this very important issue.