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


Saturday, 24 September 2011

Support groups working together?

As with all support groups and charities there are several different grandparents support groups, you would think it would be a good idea for everyone to join forces and work together, in my naivety I thought that once.
Aren't we all trying to support others in the same position as ourselves, raising awareness of denied contact in all its forms and most importantly fighting for the rights of over one million children in the UK.
The simple answer to that is yes we are, and here comes the but....... many support groups have a membership fee, and/or employ people to run the 'charity.'
If you are a large concern and need to employ staff the whole ethos of the group changes, very often the staff have no personal experience of denied contact and at the end of the day they are doing a job of work.
Sometimes the group may have some form of government funding, which inevitably changes the way in which the group is run etc.
This not a criticism, just fact.
If all the groups were working as one, our voices would be so much stronger and the fight for the rights of grandchildren would be very powerful, sadly the reasons given above prevent that happening.
Jane.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)