Grandparent Contact in London: How Mediation Helped One Grandmother Reconnect

When grandparent contact stops, it rarely stops with a decision. In most of the London cases that reach us it fades: a message left unanswered, a birthday card with no reply, a Wednesday pick-up that quietly stops being yours. By the time a grandparent picks up the phone, months have usually passed and nobody knows how to restart the conversation.

This is one of those cases, told with permission and with the details changed. It is worth reading alongside our guide to grandparents’ rights in London, which covers the legal position in full. What follows is what actually happened.

How Did One London Grandmother Lose Grandparent Contact?

Denise, as we will call her, is 71 and lives in Carshalton. For six years she had her two grandchildren every Wednesday after school and most Saturday mornings while both parents worked. She did the reading books, the swimming lessons and the school shoes. In her own words, she was part of the furniture.

When her son and daughter-in-law separated in the spring, the children stayed with their mother and moved a few miles along the road to Croydon. Denise assumed the Wednesdays would carry on much as before. They did not.

There was no single argument. Her messages started going unanswered. Then she put something on Facebook about the separation that she thought was mild, and repeated a version of events to a neighbour that found its way back to her daughter-in-law within a week. From the mother’s side, Denise had picked a side and could not be trusted with anything to do with the children. Contact stopped completely, and seven months went by. Denise posted birthday cards and never found out whether they were opened.

Can a Grandparent Start Mediation Without the Parents’ Agreement?

Denise’s first move was a solicitor’s appointment, and the advice was not what she expected. Grandparents cannot simply apply to the family court about a child. Under section 10 of the Children Act 1989 they usually need the court’s permission first, known as leave, before the application can even be heard. The House of Commons Library briefing on grandparents and contact sets out the same position.

That extra stage lands hard on people who have done the school run for years. Permission is usually granted where there has been a genuine relationship, but it is still another hearing, another wait and another bill that a parent does not face. Denise was told she would also need to attend a MIAM before applying. A MIAM, or Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting, is a one-to-one meeting with a mediator to talk through your situation and check whether mediation is suitable. It is required before most family court applications about children, and our London MIAM guide explains how it fits into the court timetable.

Her reaction is the one we hear most weeks. If she had to do the mediation meeting anyway, she may as well find out whether mediation itself worked. She booked a MIAM at our Sutton office, ten minutes from home.

A grandparent can absolutely start this process alone. You attend your own MIAM, and the mediator then writes to the other people involved to invite them in. Nobody can be forced to attend. If you want to know what that first meeting feels like, we have written up what to expect at a MIAM in London step by step.

The children’s mother declined the first invitation. She agreed after a short phone call with the mediator that dealt with the two things actually worrying her: that mediation is voluntary and confidential, and that it is not a hearing where she would be judged. She asked for one condition. Her ex-partner would not be in the room. That condition is probably why the case worked. This was a dispute about grandparent contact, not about the separation, and keeping the two apart kept it manageable.

What Happened in the Mediation Sessions in Sutton?

Session one: separate rooms

Feeling was still running high, so the mediator suggested shuttle mediation for the first session, where each person sits in a separate room and the mediator moves between them. It gave the mother room to say things she had never said to Denise directly: that she felt she had been talked about, that she was worried the children would be questioned about her, and that she did not want the separation discussed in front of them.

Denise heard all of it second hand, which was easier than hearing it across a table. Her answer, once she had sat with it for a week, was not a defence. She said she was sorry about the Facebook post and had not thought about how it would read to someone who was already struggling. That single sentence changed the temperature of the case.

Session two: the same table

Both were willing to sit in the same room for the second session. Ninety minutes went on the practical questions that always decide these cases: which Saturday, how long, where, who does the handover, and what happens at half term. The mediator kept steering it back to the children and what would help two young children make sense of seven months of silence.

Session three: writing it down

The third session tested the plan against the awkward scenarios, then recorded it in a Memorandum of Understanding. That is the written summary a mediator prepares of what everyone has agreed. It is not automatically legally binding, but it is a clear record that both people have signed up to, and it stops arrangements drifting back into argument. The same approach is used in most of our child arrangements cases across London.

What Did the Grandparent Contact Agreement Actually Say?

The agreement was deliberately modest at the start, with room to grow. That was Denise’s idea, not the mediator’s, and it is one of the reasons the mother said yes.

• One Saturday a month: two hours to begin with, rising to a full day after three months if it was going well
• A video call every other Sunday: fifteen minutes, with the mother present in the room for the first few
• Separate from the father’s time: so that the visits were not eaten into by her son’s own weekends with the children
• No social media: no photographs of the children posted anywhere, agreed by everyone rather than imposed on Denise
• No discussion of the separation: nothing about the parents’ arrangements said in front of the children
• Birthdays and Christmas: cards and presents handed over directly, not sent through the father
• A review after six months: a short catch-up call to adjust the plan rather than let problems build

From Denise’s first phone call to the signed document was just under nine weeks, including a fortnight’s gap while the mother took time to decide.

Should a Grandparent Contact Agreement Be Made Legally Binding?

Denise asked this, and most grandparents do. A Memorandum of Understanding is not an order and cannot be enforced on its own. To make an arrangement about children binding you would need a court order, and for a grandparent that means going back to the permission stage first. We explain the options in our guide to whether a mediation agreement is legally binding.

In this case both of them decided against it. The mother’s view was that a court order would put the relationship back on a legal footing when it had only just come off one, and Denise agreed. Nine months on, the visits are still running and have moved to full days. If the arrangement had broken down, her route would have been a C100 application in the London family court, with the permission stage first.

How Much Did Grandparent Contact Mediation Cost Compared With Court?

Denise paid for her MIAM and split the cost of the joint sessions with the children’s mother. Because the case was about arrangements for children, her mediator was able to apply for the family mediation voucher, a government contribution of up to £500 per family that is not means-tested and does not cover the MIAM itself. Our page on the cost of family mediation in London sets out current session prices.

Court fees are correct as of July 2026 and are taken from the Ministry of Justice fee update.

What Can Other London Grandparents Take From This Case?

Every family is different, but the moves that shifted this case are ones we see working again and again across our family dispute work in London.

• Ask for less than you want at first: two hours a month that actually happens beats a full day that never gets agreed
• Deal with the parent, not through your child: asking your son or daughter to pass messages usually makes the other parent dig in
• Keep your contact separate: time that comes out of the other parent’s weekend is far harder to agree
• Listen to the objection before answering it: the concerns are often about loyalty and information, not about you as a grandparent
• Raise social media yourself: offering the boundary before it is demanded reads as goodwill
• Watch the tone of what you send: a free message tone checker can catch a line that will land badly before you send it

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