By Deborah YetterKentucky LanternFor Barry Shrout, raising four granddaughters is a role he willingly took on and that he acknowledges is exhausting and expensive.“The financial part o
For Barry Shrout, raising four granddaughters is a role he willingly took on — and that he acknowledges is exhausting and expensive. “The financial part of it is a big thing with me,” said Shrout, 66, a single grandfather from Maysville who has custody of the girls ages 10, 11, 13 and 17. “I have […]
Natasha King thought it would be temporary, just a few months.
When the state called in 2013 and asked if she could parent her two grandchildren, she didn’t hesitate to take in the kids she loved more than anything in the world. Their mother’s drug problems had gone from bad to worse, and their father had addiction issues of his own.
King, a 46-year-old nursing assistant in Lexington, Kentucky, is still the primary caretaker of her grandchildren, now 12 and 13 years old. Although she had been working two jobs to support her family, she had to quit one during the pandemic to guide the kids through online learning.