Please find my reply to your email attached, regarding the next meeting of the Petitions Committee to be held on the 20th November 2012.

I do earnestly thank the committee for their deliberations regarding a Charter for Grandchildren and the rights of children, with more and more charities coming to the fore defending children and all the different circumstances they find themselves in.

It is essential that the National Assembly of Wales scrutinise the plight of some children and decide what the best way forward is especially using the experiences of what has happened to children in the past which is now again being brought to the public’s notice daily.

I regret I cannot open the debate up to include

 abuse of children by celebrities or people in power,

 the care of children in care, and what steps are taken to protect them,

 Children living on the street and the circumstances that brought them to decide to live there.

 Fostering and adoption

It is apparent to us that new Family Laws and procedures are not working and one of the reasons they are not performing to what they were designed to achieve could be, the fact that the Department for Social Services who have the responsibility for the protection of many of the children are over stretched.

It is hoped that a Charter for Grandchildren which objectively is designed to give the children the right of access to both parents, denying some parents, who wish to use children as a weapon of control against the other, causing the children unnecessary emotional abuse, is favoured by the committee and that the Petition is brought forward for discussion by the National Assembly of Wales.

My thanks again for the hard work done by the National Petitions Committee of The National Assembly of Wales and to the Petitions Team for the support they give the committee.

Kind regards

Frank Bradfield

Grandparents Apart Wales