"We want access to our grandkids"
By Jayne Warren - 15/04/2008
Campaigners are asking for YOUR support to give grandparents legal access to their grandchildren if they are taken into care or should tragedy strike the parents.
Grandparents provide around 60% of childcare, so you would think they would have an automatic right to be considered as a carer for their grandchildren if their parents die. But they don't. Unless grandparents or other family members are named in the will as legal guardians they have no legal rights - and may even face losing their beloved grandchildren to “corporate” care.
A short term partner of a parent who may have lived with a child for only a year will have greater legal rights than a biological family.
Several organisations, led by The Grandparents’ Rights campaign, disagree with the current law and have submitted an Early Day Motion to Parliament through John Hemming MP (EDM No. 1199) and they are asking Mature Times readers to persuade their MPs to sign this.
The campaigners also point out that currently some 60,000 children in the UK are in care; and, when a child is adopted - unless it is an open adoption - all contact with the biological family may be severed.
Campaigner Michael Robinson told the Mature Times: “We want changes in the law so that the biological family of a child should have an automatic right to be involved in any court case where alternative carers to the parents are being considered. As many of your readers will have seen, the Government's response to our petition in January was not what we had hoped for - so we are stepping up the campaign.
“We believe that a child's right to family life requires greater legislative protection, that there should be an expectation that ancestors and close biological relatives become parties to Family Court cases on request, and that biological relatives - including grandparents, aunts and uncles - should be automatically notified of care and adoption proceedings.”
The campaigners believe that the UK grants too much power to the “corporate parent” which is focussed on targets, goals and numbers - not the child's fundamental need for nurture and love.
The organisations who are calling for legal rights for grandparents and the protection of a child's human right to family life include: The Grandparents Association, Grandparents Apart, Grandparents As Parents, the Grandparent Action Group UK, Families Need Fathers, Mothers Apart from their Children (MATCH) and Jewish Unity for Multiple Parenting (JUMP).
For more information call 0845 4349585 or to read the full wording of the EDM go to the website linked below.