Welcome.


Hi everyone and welcome to Bristol Grandparents Support Group blog. Although we are Bristol based we have grandparents from all over the UK and beyond as members.

It is estimated that over one million children in the UK are denied contact with their grandparents due to family breakdown which may have been caused by divorce/separation, alcohol/drug dependency,domestic violence,bereavement or family feud.
Every child has the right to have contact with their grandparents
if they wish and unless proven unsafe for them to do so. To deny contact from a parent or grandparent has to become as socially unacceptable as drink driving.
I hope to keep you up to date with what is going on in BGSG and I shall continue to campaign for the rights of children to have a loving and meaningful relationship with both parents and their extended family. So please join in as good to hear your views, not just mine!
I also will support via Skype.
There is no membership fee to be part of Bristol Grandparents Support Group.
Esther Rantzen says, " To every grandparent, links of love can never be broken in our hearts."

Please contact during office hours.
07773258270


Friday 7 February 2014

14million grandparents, a force to be listened to.

So after an extraordinary couple of weeks, time to take a breath and look to the future and where do we go from here.
Those of you who attend out meetings will know that we are a small charity, with a constitution and trustees.
We need to consider becoming a registered charity, the pros and cons.
Being a registered charity you have to have an annual income of £5 k, as you all know, we get excited if we have £50 in the kitty for running costs of the group etc.
So consideration required.

On a different tack, there are 14million grandparents in the UK a force to be reckoned with. We are a generation who plod up to the ballot box with our votes, we can make a difference a huge difference on getting the government to accept Parental Alienation is abuse, in our case it is abuse of grandparents.
Abuse is an offence this emotional abuse is effecting a million grandparents.
If we have all grandparents supporting us, just think what we could achieve?
I know that many, many grandparents who are denied contact find it so hard to talk to others about this issue, but I see it as vital.
We can no longer hide this away, pretending that this abuse of grandparents is not happening.
It is also abuse of a generation of children, emotional abuse of denying them a relationship with their grandparents.
It is against their Human Rights.
I had a long conversation on the phone this afternoon after the meeting with a grandparent, who said she doesn't tell atone at all that she is denied contact, because she thinks people will think she is a bad person.
Until we do talk about this it will remain something that few people have any knowledge of denied contact. That is until it happens to them, and as we all know it can happen to anyone.
So don't hide this away like a skeleton in the cupboard.

Jane
www.bristolgrandparentssupportgroup.co.uk

No comments:

Post a Comment