LaDonna Martinez's backyard is stocked with toys, a table smeared with mud pie and a foxhole all signs that she's joined the legion of relatives bringing up children their parents can't.

At 57, the Ventura woman is rearing her brother's children, 10-year-old Guy Bartee and 9-year-old Joanie Bartee.

They still see their dad, but the courts have found that Martinez can provide a better home. They don't know where their mom is.

Rather than see them go into foster care, Martinez and her husband, Mario, 57, agreed to bring them into their comfortable suburban house. She expects to keep them until they're 18.

"There really was nobody else to rescue them," the slender, gray-haired woman said.

The trend has led to a huge number of relatives like Martinez providing care. Statewide, some estimate that there are 600,000 children in out-of-home placements with relatives, compared with 85,000 in the foster care system.

One indication of the size of the relatives-as-parents force came when census workers for the first time asked how many grandparents were responsible for children under 18.

The results: More than 5,600 grandparents in Ventura County, 295,000 in the state and 2.4 million in the nation were caring for minors. And the figures did not include other relatives such as aunts and uncles, older brothers and sisters who have stepped up to become parents.

It isn't what they envisioned doing, even if they saw the signs coming, nor do many of them get much government aid to do it.

Fewer resources for relatives

"None of them volunteered or looked forward to raising kids again. These kids in some instances were really dropped on their doorsteps," said Falope Fatunmise, a regional director for Edgewood, a nonprofit organization advising the state on services for relative caregivers. "There aren't comparable resources to pay relatives for raising these kids if you compare it to the foster care system."

But there's growing recognition that they need a hand, officials say.

Agencies from AARP to boards overseeing the needs of seniors are devoting money and resources to grandparents raising children. And this fiscal year for the first time, Ventura County won a state grant to start a program to support relative caregivers.

About 200 of the Ventura County children placed with relatives are already in the court system because of suspected abuse or neglect by their parents. They may have lost their parents to death, drugs, jail, abandonment or disability.

Many other relative caregivers step in before the kids come to the attention of authorities, said David Friedlander, executive director of Kids & Families Together, a nonprofit agency in Ventura.

"A lot of them have no legal status whatsoever. They just took on the kid," he said.

His agency began offering support services with the aid of small grants in the early part of this decade, and is expanding its effort now that Ventura County has won new funding.

The state Legislature passed a law 10 years ago to start a kinship support program, but limited it to counties in which at least 40 percent of children in court custody were placed with relatives. Ventura County and many others, with only a quarter of court-controlled children in relative care, didn't qualify.

Then in 2006, the Legislature removed the 40 percent threshold and boosted the funding to $4 million. Ventura County won start-up funding of $270,000 this year and expects $140,000 next year.

The county Human Services Agency is spending money on services such as a caregiver library, tutoring for the children, and up to $3,000 to help relatives with deposits for larger homes.

Nonprofit offers many programs

But it awarded most of the money to Kids & Families Together, which provides counseling, support groups, and help in managing the parenting, financial and legal challenges.

Martinez, who is beginning to mentor other parents, heard about the agency a few years ago when she began preparing for the possibility that her brother's two children would move in with her.

She joined a support group. She learned that the kids could be expected to be angry on Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthdays and Christmas. She and her husband went through the sometimes-arduous process of becoming legal guardians.

Faced with the prospect of taking the children or seeing them go into foster care, most relatives don't hesitate when they get the call.

Social workers can clear them for placement in a few hours. It's not until later that the relatives realize what they've taken on, from homework to middle-of-the-night earaches.

Legislators passed the law to start the kinship program after doctors at San Francisco General Hospital noticed a huge number of pediatric patients cared for by grandparents. That surge was blamed on the crack cocaine epidemic, but now the scourge is methamphetamine, some caregivers say.

Linda Stafford knows the fallout.

The Fillmore woman took in her 5-year-old granddaughter in 2002. Stafford said her granddaughter was so traumatized, she would cry every day when she took her to kindergarten and first grade.

"They are little people, and they have fears and anxieties just like us big people. To be so young and have to go through so much it's not fair," Stafford said.

The girl is now 10 and "absolutely thriving," said Stafford, who runs a business and mentors other parents.

She keeps up her energy by running four miles a day and finds solace in her faith.

But a high proportion of caregivers turn up with stress-related diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, Edgewood's Fatunmise said.

He said no long-term national research exists on how these children fare through adulthood, but the state program has shown that relative care can lead to stability.

Statewide, 95 percent of the children assisted through the program stayed in their relatives' homes. In contrast, one-third of foster children entering the state system moved three or more times in a year.

The Bartee children's father, Guy Bartee, believes that they are much better off with his sister than in foster care.

"It's family," he said.