Seniors Network - Grandparents battle for grandchildren

FLORENCE Smalls two granddaughters smile down at her from their photograph in her neat little flat.

That's as much as she sees of them these days: since a rift with their mother - her daughter - two years ago, she has been denied any contact with them, even though they live within a half-hour drive away.

Yet, when she went to court to try and gain a modest two hours access to the girls each week, the sheriff, although sympathetic to her case, didnt feel able to grant her access, regarding contact as "unworkable".

Small, from Greenock, is one of a growing number of grandparents who, despite the care they may have lavished on them, have become estranged from their grandchildren, and are discovering to their cost that, when it comes to a divorce or other family split, they have no more rights of access than a total stranger.

Yet, as families fragment, for whatever reason, from divorce or argument to the effects of drug abuse, grandparents are increasingly reverting to their traditional role as mainstays of back-up family care.

The Scottish Executive, currently mulling over on its proposed reform of family law, has stated up until now that it doesnt consider a right of contact for grandparents to be appropriate; but the debate is heating up as campaigners call for some degree of legal entitlement to be granted to grandparents who often have to go through the courts to gain access to their grandchildren. Among them is Grandparents Apart, a Glasgow-based self-help group who last month recruited rock star and child access campaigner Sir Bob Geldof as an honorary patron.

Jimmy Deuchars, a founder of Grandparents Apart, draws upon his own bitter experience as a grandfather, and that of what he claims are hundreds of other members, in discovering that, all too often, grandparents are written out of the picture when it comes to child access.

A 60-year-old former Glasgow taxi-driver, disabled with arthritis, he and his wife lost their daughter to breast cancer some years ago, shortly after she gave birth to her second child. Mr Deuchars and his wife, Margaret, looked after the two children, with their son-in-law taking the elder one home at night. Then the son-in-law remarried and his new wife took total control of the children, refusing to let the Deuchars see them.

"The children were always happy to be with us," says Mr Deuchars, "and for the youngest, my wife was her mother for three years."

Deciding they were "on a slippery slope", Mr Deuchars took the matter to court in Liverpool, where his son-in-law and family were living, and managed to secure a degree of access to the children at a mediation session before actually appearing in court. They see the children, now aged 13 and 11, regularly since then, "but when we realised that grandparents had no rights in that kind of situation, we were absolutely heartbroken, devastated - we'd lost our daughter and now we were going to lose her kids".

Aware that many grandparents were not so lucky as them in resolving such estrangement, the Deuchars got together with a group of similarly-concerned people and Grandparents Apart was formed in a pub in Baillieston in January 2001. Already, says Mr Deuchars, they have some 800 people on their books.

He has strong feelings about the way that "the law simply writes grandparents out of the picture. Grandparents are having to apply to the courts simply for permission to raise an action to see their grandchildren. They're being treated like criminals. And, if you go to social services about access, you're told you're not a relevant person."

The group has been lobbying the Scottish and Westminster parliaments and in June presented a petition to the justice minister, Cathy Jamieson, asking for right of contact for grandparents to be taken on board in the on-going family law review. Ms Jamieson told the campaigners it was now up to them to gather evidence to back up their case.

"So, we sent out 800 letters asking for people's stories," says Mr Deuchars. "We've got about a dozen cases at the moment and we're gathering more."

Meanwhile, after approaching Bob Geldof, initially without response, Mr Deuchars was taken aback recently to receive a phone call from the singer. "A voice says 'Jimmy' and I said who's this'? and he says ?Bob Geldof'. I thought it was somebody winding me up, but it turned out to be him, and he asked all about he group."

A seasoned campaigner for father's access rights, having gone through a bitter custody battle with his wife, the late Paula Yates, after they split up in 1995, Geldof, says Mr Deuchars, "realised the injustice of our whole situation". He joins MPs Robin Cook and Des Browne, and MSPs Donald Gorrie and Dr Winnie Ewing and other politicians in the organisation's list of patrons.

However, even the vociferous Sir Bob may not be enough to sway the current debate over grandparents' access in favour of Deuchars and company.

The Law Society of Scotland, involved in the present family law consultation, agrees with the Executive's view that automatic entitlement to access for grandparents is not appropriate. "We certainly acknowledge that grandparents have a very considerable part to play in their grandchildren's lives," says Michael Clancy, director of the Law Society of Scotland, "and they do have the opportunity to go to court if there are circumstances where that is necessary.

"At the end of the day, these rights must be exercised with the best interests of the children in mind. However, this is certainly a very important issue and has to be fully debated."

The official consultation period on the forthcoming paper on family law has now closed, but a spokesman for the Scottish Executive stresses that campaigners such as Grandparents Apart are not wasting their time in continuing to present evidence.

"Our view has been very much that a right of contact might be not always be in the best interests of a child. However, we're willing to be convinced otherwise."

It is interesting, he adds, the way in which the issue over grandparents' rights has particularly taken off in Scotland, rather than England where protests regarding family law have been more over fathers' rights. "Clearly, this is an issue that has created a lot of debate and we will consider all responses before we bring forward the paper."

The effects on those denied contact with their grandchildren can run deeper than on a purely emotional level, says Peter Smith, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, who has carried out research in the area. "Many grandparents feel that their health has suffered as a result; certainly they felt depressed and sometimes had to have counselling."

The problem has risen with the divorce-rate, he says. "The trouble arises when parents split up and the paternal grandparents, in particular, are at risk of losing contact with their grandchildren, often because the father himself loses some contact if care and control of the children is with the mother. That can be seen as very unfair, because whatever has happened, it shouldn't be blamed on the grandparents."

Yet, he agrees, as traditional mainstays of family care, grandparents are "on call" as never before, and now the primary source of child care for working mothers of young children - something which Mr Deuchars homes in on. "Grandparents are watching children a lot more than they used to; it's just not being recorded."

These days, he continues, when so many young people are turning to drugs and crime, grandparents are sometimes having to step in to look after the grandchildren because their children are simply not fit to do so, yet they don't always qualify for a carer's allowance. While some local authorities do award allowances to grandparents in certain child-care situations, the question of paying "family" is fuelling a whole separate, running debate.

"It's a double standard," protests Mr Deuchars. "On the one hand, you might not get paid for watching your grandchildren because you're 'family', but, if you go to social services to try and gain access, you're told you're not a 'relevant person'."

For Florence Small, her hopes of seeing her grandchildren again were shattered in court, when the sheriff, despite expressing sympathy with her and at one point describing a statement by her daughter as "a blatant lie", felt that hostility between mother and daughter had developed to such a degree that contact between the girls and grandmother was "unworkable".

Yet, all she was seeking was two-hours-a-week access. Now she has resigned herself to wait for the day when her grandchildren are old enough to make up their own minds. In the meantime, though, she believes that while she lost out on the court decision, she won her case morally. "The only thing I can do is to help organisations like Grandparents Apart to help other people, and I'll be certainly writing to the Executive."