 Grandparents are taking on parents' roles |
More than 50,000 children are living in Scottish homes where at least one parent is addicted to drugs, BBC Scotland can reveal. There is also increasing evidence that grandparents are being asked to pick up the pieces of the children's lives, often without financial help or professional support.
The figure has been uncovered by researchers at Glasgow University who claim there is a major growth in the number of youngsters being cared for by other family members.
They are warning that the problem is leaving grandparents in a difficult position.
Professor Neil McKeganey, from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, has warned that only a tiny fraction of those children are known about by official services.
Fillling the gap
"It can undermine every conceivable aspect of these children's lives - their relationships with parents, their relationships with friends, their relationship with siblings, their performance in school, their daily routines," Prof McKeganey said.
He claims that grandparents are filling the gap of the parents, quite often putting their own lives on hold.
"They often have to explain to the children where their parents are, if their parents are alive, or are they going to die at any moment as a result of their drug use," he added.
"It's very difficult because the drug user is the grandparents' own child so they have all the feelings associated with having their own child as an addict and also all the sense of responsibility and guilt and lack of support with looking after the grandchildren."
One-Minute World News 
News services
Email this to a friend 
Printable version 
