I want to protest again! When I began blogging I thought it would involve some varied interests, but one in particular got me going - and that was reading Camilla Cavendish on the injustice of Family Courts. I wanted to shout out, ‘Foul play!’ From her articles which can be read in The Times her campaign appears to have proved successful - with Jack Straw announcing a greater openness in Family Courts from this April. There are useful articles there with helpful advice for parents and grandparents.
It is on the question of grandparents that my blood pressure has risen again from reading the Daily Mail.
It raises the question for me, where there is family breakdown and children need care, do any of the extended family have any rights in offering to care for the children, especially if there is already established bonding between the children and relatives? The government has made it clear that it is dependent on the ‘grandparent brigade’ to help out with childminding so parents can go to work. Does the relationships between grandparents and grandchildren carry any weight where there is a breakdown in family care? Apparently not! UK law appears to rule out any claim on grandchildren in need. Even at aged 46 they can be considered too old! Peter Harris caught my attention when he titled his report, “No one said Cherie Blair was too old to be a mother at 46…Do social workers have grandparents?”
Says Peter Harris,
“One is bound to ask this question when you hear of cases like that of this Edinburgh couple aged 46 and 59 respectively.
In the minds of some social workers there seems to be a real prejudice about age which makes them turn to foster care and adoption, rather than care by grandparents.
After all, Cherie Blair was 46 when she had her fourth child, and Tony was 52 - did anyone seriously suggest that they were too old to be parents?
What has happened to the Edinburgh couple is all too often reflected in some of the 8000 calls that the Grandparents’ Association advice line receives each year.
Distressed grandparents call for support and help, such calls taking 20-25 minutes, as sad stories of grandchildren being ‘lost’ to care and adoption are related.”
Knowing the investment grandparents up and down the country put into their families it was this next paragraph that made my blood boil and want to shout again, ‘Foul play!’ Says Peter Harris,
“Grandparents have no rights, or standing, in respect of grandchildren in England and Wales (they do in Scotland). Frequently they are ignored, or dismissed as potential carers, by social services.”
“Of course,” says Harris, “not all grandparents are suitable, or willing, to provide full time care for grandchildren. But many are - and will undergo financial loss by giving up work - when asked to take on the responsibility of providing a loving and secure family home for a grandchild.”
And we would all agree with Harris that, “The professionals who are concerned with children in crisis have to take difficult and complex decisions in a highly emotional field. Such decisions will echo down the years for a child, often well into adulthood.”
But I can’t get over the idea that grandparents who have loved and cared for their grandchildren and are able, may not be taken into consideration when care is needed in family breakdown! Children are the greatest investment in family life, beyond material possessions. As a reader I don’t know all the details of this case - but it seems to me that the law is unjust when it can dismiss responsible extended family interest in providing care where there is family breakdown. To protect the interests of that investment there are parents who arrange to will their children to suitable family members to provide for their children’s care until they become of independent age should anything tragic happen that would make the parents unable to continue the care themselves. But would the law of the land overrule the will of the parent/s - verbal or written? That is what seems to have taken place in this particular case. Read the full article by Peter Harris.
For other articles on this case read:
Melanie Phillips.
Jonathan Brocklebank and Michael Seamark
