'A tree must bend with the wind'

Your opinion is required here.

Dedicated Grandparents are the huge army that is never recognised officially for their tireless love and protection for children which comes automatically to them. Being mostly available 24/7 for caring for children but can and do suffer the indignity of being ignored as irrelevant persons by the social services and the law. This is an army that doesn’t need to be bought with up to £200,00p a week (from a hard pressed public purse) to buy care for each child which appears to be attracting the wrong kind of people. A lot of grandparents do need help but not bought. There is a lot of them caring for their grandchildren that do not need or accept a penny but do it because they can afford it and it is their own flesh and blood. The ‘Charter for Grandchildren’ does not ask for legal rights for grandparents or anything like that. There is too much opposition from the government for that and god only knows why. It asks for the professionals to look more closely at the role grandparents can play in their children’s lives to make them utilize the benefits grandparents can be, like keeping a child in a stable home environment, maintaining a child’s identity, health history, keeping extended family connections rather than strangers which renders a child confused, resentful and withdrawn an effect which carries with them through-out their whole lives.

The Ten Commandments of Family Law. The Forgotten Children. + (Scroll down for) The Charter for Grandchildren + The Way Forward. http://gapukfamilyinformation.blogspot.com/

Question

Hallo Jimmy,Thankyou for you e-mail, but I am a grandmother, who has been denied accssesss to my grandchildren by my son and the childrens mother,They do not have any isssues with abuse or drugs or any thing of that nature.I do want the goverment to give legal rights of access for it is my grandchildrens rights to know their grandmother, they love me dearly and cannot see me because of their parents. it is now six months since i have seen them and its breaking my heart.Not all families have problems with drugs ectra and feel the grandparents association are ignoring simple acssesss problems which is just as important.too much emphasis is given to "problem families . SO I WANT LEGAL ACCESSS TO MY GRANDCHILDREN.If you are not pushing for this please do not contact me again I will start my own campaign !!!!!!!!!

Jimmy’s answer

There is so much opposition to grandparents getting legal access to their grandchildren that we are alienating ourselselves from parents as well as SS and the law. We have tried for 10years and came up against it all. The project we are trying now is getting grandparents recognised more by making the Charter for Grandchildren mandatory for professionals in children's lives wich is a back door attempt for grandparents and not standing on on anyones toes. This is gathering support from Glasgows local authority city councillors and 3 MSPs have joined in to take it forward. 3/4 of the grandparents we represent do not help themselves. If they all stood up to be counted we would not have a problem So if you can do that better than us good luck. Taking them head on is just not getting support. If you still don't want me to contact you again then i will remove you from our list. Jimmy

Question

Dear Jimmy,

Why should we as grandparents , be alienated by parents for wanting accssess to our own grandchildren. Divorced parents have accsesss rights, why not grandparents. You claim youve been fighting for 10 YEARS for these rights and you have not been recognised ?????? WHY ????? Now you are using the childrens charter to slip in the back door you said> BE UP FRONT AND STATE WHAT SHOULD BE GRANDPARENTS RIGHTS......ACCSESS TO OUR OWN GRANDCHILDREN !!!!!!!You suggested that maybe I could do better , I found that sarcastic, obviously thats why I contacted " The Grandparent Association " but you have given up the cause... WHY???? Can you give me a name of any other body that may help me with this matter ???

"A tree must bend with the wind or it will break”

We have been up front as you put it and achieved the ‘Charter for Grandchildren’. We created that in a stakeholders group with the Scottish Government and toured Scotland in a caravan to promote it. A vote was taken in parliament for grandparents to have legal rights and it was shot down in flames. I started off like you stating "black and White" and one of our founder members said we would need to compromise. I said firmly no! We wanted rights to our own grandchildren. I am not too proud to say i was wrong. It took a while to clear the grey area and now we are compromising. Our MSP and others are backing our cause now, whereas after the charter was created no-one was listening to us. You obviously feel we are not doing it properly with your sarcastic remark of quote ..."If you are not pushing for this please do not contact me again I will start my own campaign !!!!!!!!!" unquote So don't condem others that have the experience until you have exhausted the process yourself. You can help by doing what you think should be done there is room for all. The more the merrier to take up the cause. We do it as we see how it should be done. You can too. What we produce is for use for anyone to further the cause if they want to use it.

So can I welcome you to the fold.

Jimmy