Grandparents play a vital role in many children’s lives, providing care, stability and continuity during times of family change. Yet when relationships break down, they can find themselves suddenly cut off, with limited legal routes to maintain contact. As family justice reforms reshape private law children proceedings, including the proposed removal of the presumption of parental involvement, the expansion of Child Focused Courts and ongoing reviews of kinship care, practitioners must rethink how they advise grandparents. In this article Nicola Scriven, an associate solicitor in the family team at Stephen Rimmer considers how this year’s reforms change the landscape for grandparent applications, and looks at who is applying, what the changes mean, and how practitioners should prepare these cases.
Grandparents are often the quiet constant in a child’s life. They do the school runs, step in when parents are working and, when a family is under strain, they can be the one stable relationship a child has. Yet when a family breaks down, that relationship is among the first to be lost.
The route back through the courts is familiar: mediation, an application for leave under section 10 of the Children Act 1989 (unless an exception under section 10(5)(b) applies) and, if leave is granted, a welfare-based decision on a child arrangements order. What has changed in 2026 is much of what surrounds that route. Parliament intends to remove the presumption of parental involvement, the way private law cases are run is being redesigned, and the law on kinship care is under review. So where does that leave grandparents, and how should we be advising them?
Who is applying
The most detailed data remains the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory’s study of “non-standard” private law applications, meaning those involving someone other than a parent. Over the period 2017/18 to 2020/21, it found around 5,500 such applications a year in England and 300 in Wales.
Grandparents made up 58% of all non-parents involved in England and 63% in Wales. Around a quarter of non-parent parties were over 60, mostly women, and families in more deprived areas were over-represented.
Most of these applications were for child arrangements orders – 56% in England and 59% in Wales – and in England, a high number were brought by extended family members seeking for the child to live with them.
Grandparent applications to the family court are not one type of case. Broadly, they fall into two groups; grandparents trying to maintain or restore a relationship after separation, estrangement or bereavement (applications made under section 8 of the Children Act 1989); and grandparents who are, or are about to become, the child’s main carer (applications made under section 14(A) of the Children Act 1989). They need very different advice.
The end of the presumption
In 2014, the presumption of parental involvement (section 1(2A) of the Children Act 1989) was introduced to help ensure that a child could maintain a relationship with both parents following separation. The presumption applies in private law children cases and tells the court to presume that involving both parents in a child’s life will be good for the child. Clause 17 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill would remove that presumption, meaning that the court will no longer start from the legal assumption that a relationship or involvement with both parents is automatically in the child’s best interest. The rest of section 1 of the Act would stay the same, including the rules that the child’s welfare comes first, that delay is likely to harm the child, and that the court should only make an order if it is better than making none. Although no timescale has been given, the government has indicated it plans to amend the legislation as soon as time allows.
Under the intended reform, once a case is under way, this would put parents and grandparents on a more equal footing, as both will rely on the welfare checklist without a statutory head start, but it makes no difference to the first hurdle that Grandparents still need the court’s permission to apply. The court decides this under section 10(9), and at that stage the child’s welfare is not its paramount consideration.
For me, that is now the real issue. With the presumption for parents being removed, this calls for a new one for grandparents and the wider family run against current policy. A more realistic target for reform is the leave requirement itself. In Scotland, grandparents do not need leave to apply for contact. If parents are losing their presumption, is there still a good reason to make grandparents ask permission first?
Getting leave right
Until the law changes, the leave application is where many grandparent contact cases are won or lost.
Section 10(9) sets out the matters in which the court must consider when deciding whether to grant leave:
1 (9) Where the person applying for leave to make an application for a section 8 order is not the child concerned, the court shall, in deciding whether or not to grant leave, have particular regard to-
- the nature of the proposed application for a section 8 order;
- the applicant’s connection with the child;
- any risk there might be of that proposed application disrupting the child’s life to such an extent that he would be harmed by it.
In my view, the case should be prepared as an evidence-led application from the outset, with the grandparent’s connection with the child under section 10(9)(b) shown concretely, through the history of care, the frequency of contact and the child’s own attachment, rather than simply asserted.
The risk of disruption under section 10(9)(c) deserves the same care. In many of these cases the real obstacle is not the grandparent at all, but the effect that conflict would have on the parent the child lives with and how contact arrangements can be managed going forwards. Rather than arguing that the parent’s objection is unreasonable, proposals should be designed to answer it. That might mean starting with indirect contact, using a trusted third party for handovers, or putting forward a staged plan that reduces the demands on the parent. A proposal that visibly protects the child’s home life and maintains it is far harder to refuse.
A faster court
On 17 March 2026, the Government confirmed that Child Focused Courts, formerly Pathfinder, will be extended across the whole of England and Wales, after pilots saw backlogs halve and cases resolved up to seven and a half months faster. All family courts in Wales already operate the model, and £17 million has been committed for 2026/27 to fund expansion in the North East, North West and East Midlands.
A central feature of the model is the Child Impact Report, which replaces the traditional Section 7 reports and safeguarding letters, and is to be prepared at an early stage by Cafcass, Cafcass Cymru or the local authority. The report is intended to capture the child’s lived experience, wishes and feelings, putting the child’s voice at the forefront of the legal proceedings from the outset. The new process used in the Child Focused Courts aims to resolve matters in no more than 12 weeks.
For grandparents, this means evidence and proposals need to be ready at the start, not developed over a series of hearings. The child’s relationship with the grandparent must be raised early enough to feature in that initial assessment, or it risks being overlooked.
When grandparents become carers
Where a grandparent is caring for the child, the choice of order has lasting consequences for parental responsibility and support. The definition of kinship care inserted into the Children Act 1989 by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 came into force on 29 June 2026, although it applies to England only. Kinship care arises where a child is cared for by an adult who is not their parent for a significant amount of time.
The Law Commission’s consultation is the bigger opportunity. For kinship carers, it proposes replacing special guardianship orders and child arrangements orders, which can often be complex to navigate and produce inconsistent outcomes for families, with a single Kinship Care Order. Alongside this, it proposes a kinship parental responsibility agreement, which would allow parents to share parental responsibility with close relatives without going to court. The consultation opened on 8 July 2026 and closes on 16 October 2026.
What practitioners should do now
So what does this mean in practice? First, prepare grandparent leave applications as evidence-led cases from day one, with proposals built around the resident parent’s likely objections, and how these can easily be overcome, because the Child Focused Court timetable leaves little room to catch up. Grandparents should ensure to keep a factual record of the contact that does take place, including dates and any communications, as this evidence will be needed for any future court applications. Second, if you act for grandparent carers, respond to the Law Commission before 16 October. Practitioner evidence of how the current orders work in practice is exactly what it needs.
No doubt, this year’s reforms have left grandparents without the recognition many of them want. Handled well, though, they give us a better chance of keeping those relationships intact, rather than watching them amongst the first to disappear the moment a family relationship breaks down.
About the author
Nicola Scriven is an associate solicitor in the family team at Stephen Rimmer LLP. She qualified in May 2026 after six years as a family paralegal. Nicola is experienced in all aspects of family law, including divorce and related finances, child arrangements and property disputes for unmarried couples.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of Today’s Family Lawyer.
