Becoming parents again: Challenges affecting grandparent primary caregivers raising their grandchildren.

BACKGROUND: A growing number of Canadian children live in the care of their grandparents, called skip-generation families. Reasons for this include teen pregnancy, death of a parent, mental/physical illnesses, and addictions. These grandparents and grandchildren are at increased risk of physical and mental illness, yet have few resources available to them. OBJECTIVE: Our study aims to describe the lived experiences of skip-generation families to better identify their needs. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews of grandparent primary caregivers from ten households in our community to chronicle their experiences raising their grandchildren. Participants were recruited by paediatricians using convenience sampling. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded using Atlas Ti software, and classified into themes by consensus. RESULTS: Five primary themes emerged from the interviews: (1) Changes in family dynamics, (2) Psychosocial impact on grandchild and grandparent, (3) Lack of resources for grandparent caregivers, (4) The challenges of parenting later in life, and (5) Resilience inspired by the love of family. Many participants (n=10) described feeling unsupported after assuming care of their grandchildren and identified a need for additional counselling services, financial support and respite care. All (n=11) highlighted that caring for their grandchildren changed their lives in positive ways. CONCLUSION: When grandparents are prioritized as primary caregivers for their grandchildren, our study suggests they receive insufficient community resources to meet their emotional, respite and financial needs. Further research involving this population in Canada is required. Paediatricians can play an essential role in recognizing these vulnerable families and advocating for additional supports and services.

Identification, isolation, and characterization of cysteinate and thiolactate complexes of bismuth.

Although bismuth compounds have been used in medicine for over 200 years, chemical characterization of complexes involving biological molecules is minimal and mechanisms of bioactivity are ill-defined. The thiophilic nature of bismuth implicates sulfur centers as likely sites for interaction, and we have exploited this feature to identify, isolate, and characterize complexes of bismuth with thiolate-carboxylate bifunctional ligands including the amino acid l-cysteine. The solid-state structures of potassium dichloro(thiopropionato)bismuth (K[1d]), dimethylaminoethanethiolato(thiopropionato)bismuth (4), and dinitrato(cysteinato)bismuthphenanthroline [5(phen)] are compared with data from electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). ESI-MS is applied to reactions of BiCl(3) or Bi(NO(3))(3) with mercaptosuccinic, malic, and succinic acids to illustrate the general observation of 1:1 and 1:2 complexes.