County Durham and Darlington PCC urges others to back Maya's Law
The petition needs 100,000 signatures by the start of February
The Police and Crime Commissioner for County Durham and Darlington are urging other PCCs around the North East and the rest of the country to back Maya's Law.
The campaign has been made by the family of Maya Chappell, who died in 2022 after being shaken to death by her mum's partner at the time.
The petition needs 100,000 signatures by the 5th of February or else it will have to start from fresh.
It calls for a new disclosure and safeguarding mechanism for at-risk children.
The family said: "We propose a statutory safeguarding framework that facilitates proactive information sharing where a child is at risk due to a parent or caregiver’s known history, even when current laws may not trigger disclosure."
• Introduce a Child Risk Disclosure Scheme (CRDS) that operates similarly to Clare’s and Sarah’s Laws but is focused on the broader risk history of caregivers.
• Require statutory services (police, social care, health) to disclose relevant past history to the child’s parent or legal guardian when a risk is identified.
• Establish multi-agency response protocols, particularly where child contact, custody, or unsupervised access is being considered.
• Empower professionals to raise safeguarding alerts and initiate family court safeguarding interventions where known risks exist, even if not currently under active investigation.
Joy Allen, Durham and Darlington PCC, said: "I'm also the victim's commissioner and when families reach out to me with heart reaching stories, it's devastating. You want to do something to prevent any other child, any other person, and families heartbreak that it causes.
"When we look at where's the gap, sometimes things aren't as joined up as they could be so you could have implications, you could have legislations that are there but they have to all be in line so by, unfortunately, being the victim and seeing things could've been different, we can make a massive difference.
"Sitting down with somebody and hearing the devastation of the impact of that and how they feel, could they have done something differently? It impacts on the family and it's there for life. Everybody feels it.
"Sometimes headlines say it's very much about the family and sometimes it's about the people who've caused the death. But when you see the outpouring of love it's really impactive and I think nobody wants to lose a life.
"Nobody wants to lose a life, tragic as it is, so prevention is obviously better than losing young people unnecessarily, so protection is really important to us and that's why I'll do all I possibly can to support Maya's family and to make this a change that we don't lose any other children that way."