Help available for grandparents

Published 12:00 am Friday, August 10, 2007

Help available
for grandparents
In response to the letter recently from the grandparent raising a grandchild who said that she could not get assistance: There is assistance in Rowan County for grandparents and other relatives who are raising children.
The Family Caregiver Support Program (FCSP) is administered by Rowan County Senior Services Department and is open to those who are at least 55 years of age and who are raising children in place of the parents. To qualify for the program, you need to be related to the child by blood or a step relationship; however, legal custody is not required. We can help the grandparent to apply for public benefits, find counseling services and parenting classes, obtain needed items such as school uniforms and school supplies and even provide sitting service so the grandparent can take a break. In addition, we are making plans to form a grandparent support group this fall.
The FCSP also assists family caregivers of adults who are more than 60 years of age and also caregivers of adults of any age who have a dementia diagnosis. The program provides the caregivers with information, access to benefits, sitter service in the home and in obtaining essential equipment and supplies.
For more information about the FCSP in Rowan and in other counties in North Carolina and around the country, call Rowan County Senior Services at 704 216-7700.
ó Mary Lynn Connor
Salisbury
Mary Connor is a caregiver specialist with Rowan County Senior Services.
Stop the land grab
Forced annexation is the malignancy spreading across North Carolina like the plague. Townships are misusing the archaic annexation law to simply steal money from surrounding neighbors while simultaneously corrupting the very foundations of our constitutional system by denying private property rights, forcing taxation without representation and denying citizens the right to vote.
Towns across this state are picking off areas to steal, one at a time, and it time that we stood together. Join the Fair Annexation Coalition on the Web at fac@nc.rr.com. Band together with other nearby communities for support and legal advice by writing to lexingtonnc@yahoo.com or calling 336-239-6926.
Information, support and voices need to join on a statewide network or we will all hang separately. There are many bills in the House for annexation reform and some for de-annexation, and I plan to take letters from people who have been annexed in the past to Raleigh in support of Bill HB1061, which calls for de-annexation of areas that have been forcefully annexed in the past. Mayors and city leaders recently testified before a hearing in Raleigh and said that people who have been annexed are happy and content with having been annexed
Send your letters or call. The politicians in Raleigh need to hear the truth. North Carolina is one of only four states still practicing the neo-communist method of forced, no-vote annexation, which allows municipalities to steal tax dollars to support their ever-increasing entitlement infrastructure and every town council’s own useless vanity projects and failed leadership.
As Thomas Jefferson said, “the whole mass of the people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of liberty.”
ó Keith Bost
Lexington
Too little outcry
While I certainly don’t condone Michael Vick’s actions and cruelty to animals, I was wondering where is all the hue and outcry about the sadistic cruelty and heinous activity in this country with all the killing of unborn human beings?
Why don’t we get upset about this?
ó Dick Richards
Salisbury