Their offspring have become known to medical and social professionals as the “walking wounded” in need of special care and education. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management calls the demographic boom a “silent epidemic” not fully recognized by the nation’s public assistance network.

Most grandparents are eager to raise their grandchildren, especially when the alternative is foster care or putting them up for adoption. Many also feel guilt from poor parenting that caused the children to be without a mother or father, said Susan Kelley, dean of the College of Health and Human Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

“Often,” she said “grandparents say, ‘We’ll be better parents this time around.’”

That can and does happen, said Kelley, when there are support services to assist with child rearing. But such services remain scarce, with both federal and state officials slow to react to the need, she said.

“I’ve been involved in the field of child abuse for the last 25 years,” said Kelley. “I’m struck by the number of grandparents who have taken on the role of caring for their children’s children who had been abused, neglected or abandoned. I’m struck by the lack of societal support.”

This tepid attitude moved Kelley to establish the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren at Georgia State five years ago. It was the first organization to bring together social experts, policymakers and researchers to address the issue.

The center’s purpose, said Kelley, is to encourage and promote effective support services for grandparents, conduct research, educate professionals in the field about the special social and health issues in intergenerational families, and influence public policy.

“Due to advanced age, poor health, poverty, minimal education and lack of transportation, these grandparents are typically unable to provide the grandchildren in their care with much beyond the basic needs,” said Kelley. “Thus the children continue to be at risk because their grandparents often have inadequate resources to raise them.”

Project Healthy Grandparents in Atlanta served as the forerunner to the national center. It was started in 1995 and works directly with grandparents, providing programs such as parenting classes, education workshops and mental health care.

Carol Watkins, a 49-year-old Madison County, Georgia, grandmother, knows the value of support services. She’s resolved to break the generational cycle of childrearing mistakes by raising her daughter’s 9-year-old twins, Kyle and Tyler.

Her daughter, she said, married young, soon got a divorce and suffers from alcoholism and severe mental illness. She does not know the whereabouts of the boys’ father.

Watkins and her husband, Daniel, 68, the step-grandfather, took informal custody of the twins when they were 5 months old, and later adopted them to overcome restrictions on medical treatment for a host of physical and behavioral problems, including manic bipolar disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome and hyperactivity. Watkins said Tyler takes seven medications daily, and Kyle four.

The Watkins’ priority is education. They home school the twins because the children kept getting into fights at the public elementary school. She relies on regional support programs for educational and medical assistance.

“Home schooling puts a lot of stress on you,” she said. “If there’s something I don’t understand I have to find somebody who does.”

And it is paying dividends, she said.