In her mid-50s, after raising three daughters, Patsy Lollis thought she was done being a parent. But when unfortunate circumstances left her 13-year-old grandson with no one to care for him, Lollis once again took on a parental role.
Patsy Lollis, right, encourages other grandparents to seek the support of Connie Maxwell for help when raising grandchildren, such as she is with her own grandson, Cody Read.Lollis and her late husband took in their grandson, Cody Read, about six years ago. But not long after, when Lollis’ and her husband’s health began to decline, raising a middle school-aged child became too much to handle. Faced with hundreds of dollars of medical bills every month, Lollis struggled to feed and clothe her grandson.
Read was always a good child, Lollis said, and she did not want to turn him over to the Department of Social Services. After speaking to someone at DSS about her situation, Lollis said they recommended she call the Connie Maxwell Children’s Home.
“I did not know what Connie Maxwell was about; I had no idea,” she said. “I really don’t know what my perception was. I think I thought it was for children that had been in trouble with the law.”
But Lollis soon realized she was wrong about Connie Maxwell. She made an appointment to meet with someone at the children’s home and knew immediately it was what she had been searching for.
“After talking with them for just a few minutes, I had a calm come over me that just told me that this is where Cody should be,” Lollis said. “Connie Maxwell was a savior for me.”
Read spent the next four years living at Connie Maxwell and attending Emerald High School, while Lollis, now 64, regained her health.
The family’s situation is not an uncommon one, and the number of grandparents raising grandchildren is on the rise, particularly in the South. Whatever the reason for the situation, Connie Maxwell hopes to help more grandparents like Lollis.
“Grandparents raising their grandkids has always been there, but it seems like the spotlight is really on that and the increase on the number of grandparents raising grandkids, and that’s really what’s made us realize that there are kids out there, families out there that might need our help,” Connie Maxwell director of program projects Brian Darrah said. “We’re calling it a grandparent initiative and raising awareness with grandparents about who we are and that we are here to support them and to partner with them with raising their grandkids if they need our help.”
Darrah and others at Connie Maxwell have spent the last few months meeting with various grandparent support groups throughout the state, discussing with them what sort of help they need in raising grandchildren. Some of the more common answers they’ve received are day care, respite care, after-school programs and homework help.
At Connie Maxwell, grandparents (or anyone raising a child) can bring their grandchild to live on the campus full-time, like Lollis did with Read, or temporarily, if a grandparent needs to spend time in the hospital, go out of town or for any other reason.
“A lot of grandparents don’t know all the things we offer, like shelter care if a grandparent who is taking care of their grandkid needed surgery and had nobody else to take care of their grandkids. We can do it for three days, a month, whatever they need, and I don’t think they realize that we go that far to do that,” Connie Maxwell’s Brian Patterson said. “We’re trying to get that out so that grandparents will know what we have to offer and know how we can help.”
Those involved with the grandparent initiative hope to start some of the other programs the grandparents expressed interest in, such as after-school programs, soon. For now, they are hoping to reach out to as many grandparents in need, to let them know Connie Maxwell can help.
“A lot of people still don’t understand the concept of Connie Maxwell,” Connie Maxwell’s Robyn Parks said. “They think that you have to give your child up, that you have to go through DSS, and that your child goes here because your child is bad or something, but that’s not the case. A lot of these kids are not orphans; this is not an orphanage like it was 100 years ago when it started. Most of these kids do have some family, but their family may be struggling, so we provide a place for a child to be where the family can be very involved if they want to be, to the extent that they can be.”
Throughout Read’s time at Connie Maxwell, Lollis remained heavily involved in his life. Her grandson was able to visit her on weekends, and they talked on the phone often. But where Lollis could not provide for Read financially, Connie Maxwell stepped in. Read was given clothes and school supplies and was provided health insurance and health care when needed.
Read admits moving to the Connie Maxwell campus was not easy. He was away from his family and had to deal with rules he wasn’t used to, but said looking back, he thinks he was fortunate to have lived at Connie Maxwell because of where he may have ended up otherwise.
“I’ll be honest, I’d probably be a statistic, a bad statistic,” he said. “Because the way my family is, I’m supposed to be doing drugs, drinking, dropping out of school.”
But Read, now 19, is far from a bad statistic. He’s a Connie Maxwell success story. After graduating high school early last December, Read went on to Piedmont Technical College, where he is now studying welding. Now that his grandmother is back in good health, Read is once again living with her, though he still visits the place that became his home through his high school years nearly every week.
“Those children there are loved,” Lollis said. “It’s not like you bring them there, and they are not cared about. They really want to help children. They really love the children.”
Lollis said she would recommend Connie Maxwell to any grandparent who is struggling to raise a grandchild and is thankful the children’s home was there during such a difficult time in her life.
“I could not have given Cody the advantages that he has had because of Connie Maxwell,” Lollis said. “I would tell any grandparent to give Connie Maxwell a chance.”
– Published with permission of the Greenwood Index-Journal.