Grandparents and Kinship Carers Act or Granny 'Annex'? Waiting for the Government

The Children Act 1989 does not provide sufficient protection to the rights of grandparents and kinship carers. Grandparents, and other non-parental attachment figures, lack procedural and substantive legal rights within English Law. This leads to difficulty in protecting the relationship between children and non-parents (such as grandparents) when children are taken into care, or parents choose to terminate these relationships. Whilst challenges of this nature are often faced by grandparents, they are representative of challenges encountered by other blood family members and step-relatives. Reform could be achieved via the enactment of a Grandparents and Kinship Carers Act which would amend three essential provisions of the Children Act 1989: s1 on children’s welfare including the welfare checklist, s3 on parental responsibility and s10 on the leave requirement. The proposed Act could make changes aimed at benefiting a wide range of social and cultural networks enjoyed by children, including the grandparent/grandchild relationship. Doing so would have the benefit of promoting inclusivity within the existing law. First, it is proposed that the Children Act 1989, s1(3) welfare checklist should be amended to make specific reference to the interests of ‘relatives’ such as grandparents, in line with the Adoption and Children Act 2002, s1(4)(f). Secondly, the language of the Children Act 1989 could be amended, to be more inclusive of those closely involved in children’s lives, such as grandparents. Hence s3 could be made more ‘inclusive’, to reflect greater diversity in family forms, via amending ‘parental responsibility’ and replacing it with ‘welfare responsibility’. Finally, s10 could be amended to remove the leave requirement for grandparents.