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


Wednesday, 26 June 2013

PIN's, I quote,"do not constitute any kind of formal legal action."

Last year we raised concerns re grandparents being accused of harassment and being issued with a PIN, (Police Information Notice) for sending birthday cards/presents etc to their grandchildren.
When asked specific questions this is the response from The Home Office:
Thank you for your e-mail , in which you ask for information, held by the Home Office, on the use of Police Information Notices by police forces, specifically:
1) How many Police Information Notices have been issued since the Act came into operation?
2) How many of these Police Information Notices have been withdrawn?
3) How many of these have resulted in criminal proceedings?
4) Therefore, how many of these relate to purely family breakdowns in relationships?

Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.
We have carried out a thorough search and established the Home Office does not hold the information you have requested.
These notices are not provided for in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and do not, in themselves, constitute any kind of formal legal action. Therefore there is no formal police procedure which must be followed and no set time limit during which they have effect.
As these notices have no formal legal basis, police forces are not required to report figures to the Home Office on their use and so the Home Office does not hold figures on their use by individual police forces. Police forces may keep their own records of their use of Police Information notices.


I personally find it very alarming that although Police can issue PIN's , there appears to be no account of them centrally.
Grandparents are severely  affected by this, if it happens to them, they are generally just ordinary people who have never experienced any thing like it before, being questioned by the Police etc, it as enormous shock, some get so distressed by believing they now have some sort of criminal record they have suicidal thoughts. And yet as you can see from this response, it is in fact no form of formal legal basis.

At this point it important for me to stress, that although this support group is based in Bristol, the incidents I am aware of over harassment warnings and PIN's are NOT in Bristol. 

Jane
www.bristolgrandparentssupportgroup.co.uk
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