Hartnell Chanot: Divorce/Family Law Solicitors Exeter, Devon

Access to Grandchildren - Grandparents fighting for their rights

Wednesday, 19 November 2008 10:15

A million children in Britain are banned from seeing their grandparents because of family breakdown. Now the forgotten victims are fighting back...

Grandparents with imited or no access to Grandchildren are terrified to speak out because they are worried it will jeopardise what little progress they may have made.

In the most extreme cases of families torn asunder and grandparents cast adrift, some children are told their grandparents have died.

Lynn Chesterburn, Chief Executive of the Grandparents Association, says: 'Parents, caught up in their own misery of the divorce, are depriving their children of the one source of continuity, security and stability for their own selfish ends: as a tool to get at their partner.'

The good news is that changes are in motion. Peter Harris is chairman of the Grandparents Association, which is urgently campaigning for a change in the law to allow grandparents legal access to their grandchildren.

A ten-minute rule bill has been heard in the House of Commons, and was passed unanimously. Now they must wait for the lengthy process in trying to make the 'Grandparents Charter' law.

See the Daily Mail article for more information