"I felt so alone,” Adele said about raising her granddaughter.

“Why do you live with your grandmother?” Joey was asked. He swallows hard. He doesn’t want to lie. He doesn’t want to lose a friend. “My Mommy is in jail,” he answers simply.

This is a story about community collaboration. Collaboration is a big word to describe the tender act of working together.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 70,044 Michigan grandparents were raising their grandchildren. There were 183,621 Michigan children living with relatives in 2000: 143,523 with grandparent, 40,098 with other relatives.

Every 10 years our national effort to account for the population of the country gives us an idea of how American communities are best served.