Welcome to the Grandchildren’s Rights’ Centre in the UK
We are campaigning on behalf of grandchildren in the UK who would like to secure and maintain their relationship with their loved and safe grandparent - but are actively prevented from doing so by their parent.
Whilst many grandchildren may see their grandparent for example perhaps once or twice a year, may be only via videocalls or messaging, or an annual holiday to their grandparent’s home overseas, etc they are enabled and supported to have a relationship of some kind with their grandparent, based around their family situation, geography, etc.
Our campaign is to change the situation for grandchildren who are actively prevented from maintaining an effective relationship with a grandparent they have already established a strong bond with.
Why is this issue important?
It’s size:
Based on a large survey undertaken in 2021, its is estimated that at least 2 million grandchildren – a sixth of the UK’s under-16 population – are actively and continuously prevented from seeing their loved and safe grandparent. This is significant.
These are grandchildren who for example would have been on daily school runs with Nan, had their parent’s working lives supported by Grandad regularly taking them to their extracurricular and leisure activities, had frequent sleepovers at Granny’s house, and often enjoyed grandchild-grandparent holidays too.
It is essentially a population health issue with both grandchildren and grandparents experiencing an ongoing yet unsupported loss and grief process surrounding a living relative.
It’s impact:
We believe from our experience working on the ground with families, mediators and the courts that this is a growing and complex social issue affecting grandchildren of all ages.
We have created six typologies here [Typologies | GUfC (grandparentsunitedforchildren.org.uk)] to enable clearer understanding of the distinct family situations in which grandchildren find themselves through no fault of their own.
We also believe that there is a large unmet psychological need of grief and loss in grandchildren arising from the sudden and abrupt loss of a generally strong, supportive and loving relationship.
We believe that this is being ‘masked’ by the mental health challenges faced by schools and other childhood settings post-pandemic.
It’s basis:
From our work with families on the ground, we believe this is an issue arising from multiple factors: social media cults and their damaging manipulation, advice and disinformation, misunderstood family expectations, alienating behaviours, and coercive controlling behaviours in some families.
The lack of effective support:
Almost all professionals working with children and young people prevented from maintaining their relationship with their safe grandparents have little to no training or resourcing in how to identify them nor support them going through this grief and loss process.
Our campaign is to change this situation for grandchildren in the UK.
Find out more on this website.
Our sister campaign, Grandparents United for Children, has already launched here [Grandparents United for Children]