The Legacy program works to preserve and strengthen family heritage, tradition and to honor familial commitment. Legacy provides skills that help families accelerate the success and emotional well-being of their children, while dealing with their own changing roles and responsibilities. Legacy provides supportive services to grandparents raising grandchildren and foster and adoptive parents. The program capitalizes on family strengths and family connections. Legacy provides case management services, marriage/relationship enrichment and education, parent education, skills for working with children with special needs, resource and referral services.
According to the U.S. Census 2000, Texas is the second highest state for grandchildren under the age of 18, living in grandparent headed households. There were 5,886,759 children in 448,439 grandparent headed households with 257,074 responsible for the children's basic needs. According to the U.S. Census 2000, there were 15,009 Dallas area grandparents living with and responsible for grandchildren under the age of 18.
Grandparents are often in crisis and in need of assistance with legal issues, financial assistance, child care, respite care, and support and referral services. Grandchildren living with grandparents, most often have an informal arrangement, making it difficult to qualify for needed resources and financial assistance. These challenges are often over-whelming, as grandparents parenting for the second time, deal with shortages of time, declining health, unfamiliarity with community resources and confusing legal problems. In addition, grandparents deal with challenges such as their own delayed dreams, parenting issues and counseling for grandchildren who have often been abused/neglected or traumatized. Grandparents needing these services range in age from the thirties to the seventies.
FCC is a participant/supporter of the annual Grandparents Raising Grandchildren conference sponsored in part by Parenting In The Metroplex, a coalition of area agencies that provide support services to fragile families.
According to the 2004 Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Data Book, there were approximately 3134 abused/neglected children placed in foster care in Dallas County and approximately 2,512 children placed in adoptive homes. Fostering and adoption is often challenging for families, due to attachment issues and physical and emotional delays experienced by the children who become a part of their family. FCC works with adoptive and foster support groups to deliver information, education and referral/support services.