SARAH'S LAW HELPS CHILD CONTACT & ACCESS

SARAH’S LAW can help with positive Child contact and access.

From today the Home Secretary Theresa May is extending the availability of Sarah’s Law Scheme to 24 police force areas across the Country. This is in response to a positive outcome from a recent pilot scheme and the continuing pressure from Sara Payne, the mother of year old Sarah who was murdered in July 2000 by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting.

Quite often in child contact and access cases a staying parent will take up with a new partner with very little knowledge of the new step-parent’s background.

Absent parents are usually the last to know and historically have not had the right to check on the suitability of anyone with regular contact to their children. Sarah’s Law changes this by giving the parent the right to check with police if anyone with regular, unsupervised contact / access to their child has a criminal conviction for child sex offences.

Even as a Court appointed CAFCASS worker I could not have these checks carried out without the written consent of the new partner and this led to delays in proceedings and undermined the possible positive working together of the family.

Another positive outcome is the ability for the police to warn parents if concerns are raised by neighbours or family members such as grandparents.

The pilot scheme was rolled out to police forces in Cambridge, Cleveland, Hampshire and Warwickshire in 2008. Today’s announcement will see this being expanded to the Cheshire, Dorset, Durham, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northumbria and Wiltshire force areas.

The Chief Constable of West Mercia Paul West endorsed the objective, in a recent statement…

”These new arrangements are a major development in safeguarding children. They empower members of the public to initiate action aimed at protecting children and will help to increase public confidence in the police and other responsible authorities as part of their role in monitoring sex offenders.”