But after an all-day session, most grandparents also appreciate handing the kids back to mummy and daddy.

But there's an alarming new twist in these family relationships, reports Karen Lizasoain, who runs a Morisset group of ageing carers under the Samaritans Kinship Care program.

"We're seeing a surge in grandparents, many of them 75 years old or more, raising their kid's children as if they were their own," she said.

"These are grandparents who despite their age are having to becoming born-again parents looking after young children full-time because the real parents are either unable to care for them or just won't bother."

She said the NSW Government's refusal to accept grandparents as carers was problematic.

"Around 75 per cent of the cases are because the natural parents abuse alcohol or drugs," Ms Lizasoain said.

"The grandparents are afraid the grandchildren will be removed by DoCS and are equally terrified for the welfare of the grandchildren, who usually suffer terrible traumas in homes shattered by their parents' drug or alcohol abuse.

"These grandparents almost always suffer in silence through embarrassment and while their children carry on getting child welfare payments and spend it on drink, cigarettes and drugs, the grandparents get nothing and dig into their retirement money to raise the grandchildren.

"I know of cases of grandparents having to get mortgages on their home to pay expensive legal fees to keep custody of the grandchildren."

Ms Lizasoain, who has nine similar groups from the Central Coast to Harrington and more than two hundred families on her books, said contact with other aged 'parents' enhanced the coping ability of grandparents.

"These grandparents are desperately isolated but this group is a way of getting emotional support from others in the same boat," Ms Lizasoain said.