There are now two national petitions for grandparents and grandchildren: please see below
Please sign: new Parliamentary petition
The Worcestershire Grandparent Support Group via their group leader Penny has set up a new petition to address grandchildren and their grandparents not having an established legal basis for their relationship.
To be debated in Parliament, the petition requires 100,000 signature by 21 August 2024.
Give legal right of contact between grandchildren and grandparents - Petitions (parliament.uk)
Petition: 'Give legal right of contact between grandchildren and grandparents'
Please sign our petition
This campaign is about the securing a grandchild's right to continue having safe, established contact with grandparents, in cases where they have been abruptly removed.
Jasvinder Sanghera CBE, a leading rights’ campaigner in the UK, says ‘
Please sign my petition to call on the Prime Minister and Justice Minister to change the Children Act 1989 and law to protect grandchildren. Children should never be weaponised or deprived of a loving, safe and caring relationship with their grandparents.’
Please click the following button to explain why this petition is important and sign it in support of grandchildren and their grandparents.
In December 2021, we initiated a Change.Org petition to support the campaign to protect the relationship between grandparents and children. Quickly, thousands not only signed the petition but shared their harrowing and heart-breaking experiences. Those signing included adults who had experienced lost relationships with grandparents as children, grandparents, and family members and friends supporting those affected. This led us to immediately establish an email address, so that volunteers could respond to the ongoing need for emotional support and where necessary offer legal guidance.
At the time of writing 36,520 people have signed the petition that calls upon the Prime Minister and Justice Minister, to change the Children Act 1989 in relation to legislation and the urgent need to improve judicial responses. It is important to note that Grandparents United FC firstly sought to create a petition on the government’s website and this was twice turned down due to being informed that such a petition already existed.
See below for an initial data analysis of the petition data so far (September 2023)
Clicking on this image will open the page to sign this petition.
Heat map analysis of change.org petition signatures
The map to the right shows a heat map of the change.org petition signatories so far.
The redder the area of the country, the more signatures GUfC have received. The bluer areas of the country have fewer signatures.
Generally aside from rural areas (where we would expect to see fewer signatures anyway), and assuming that signatories have a personal interest in the issue grandchildren not seeing their safe grandparent, the data is showing a widespread picture across the UK.
It is not concentrated in certain areas (and an upcoming analysis of petition signatories will show if affluence or deprivation is a factor in this issue based on the above assumptions).
National rights’ campaigner, Jasvinder Sanghera CBE, highlights key areas of policy and law that affect the continuance of grandchild-grandparent relationships