Maya's Law petition by County Durham family on its way to target
More than 6-thousand people have signed the petition
The petition for 'Maya's Law' by a County Durham family is more than half way to its first target.
The campaign is being spearheaded by Gemma Chappell, the great-aunt of two year-old Maya Chappell who was shaken to death by her mum's partner three years ago.
She's wanting a new disclosure and safeguarding mechanism for at-risk children.
Gemma said: "All I'm asking is two minutes of your time to sign it which could mean a lifeline for a child. It can save a child and give them a voice.
"We're looking at around nine weeks it's been in place now, so in nine weeks to get that many signatures is great. We're still a long way off 100,000 and we're short of 10,000. I want to be running at that 10,000 now. However, the support's been great.
"It's been fantastic the support we've had, seeing it not just on social media but in person as well, people joining us for our events, people saying we'll help out, people donating money to us or donating just a little prize for us to do raffles.
"The support's been great from people and it's nice to see people happy to help and not just that, but also wanting to give a child a voice as well because it's important to them that they do that, so it's great to get that support from people.
"This is around safeguarding with children isn't it? Who doesn't want to make systems better for children, to protect children, they're our future. We argue a lot about other things going on but ultimately, if we're making those changes and we're not making changes for children that are going to be that future, what are we making those other changes for?
"I think people believe that it'll never happen to them and that's one thing that I've found with this campaign is a lot of people think 'oh, that doesn't happen to me, it hasn't directly bothered me, I don't know anybody that has been through that' but it can happen to you. It can be a neighbour, it can be your family member, nobody's invisible to this.
"Two minutes of your day what's that? It's putting the kettle on isn't it? Walk away from it, sign the petition, the water will be boiled and then you can have your cup of tea. It's getting a biscuit out of the cupboard, it's scrolling through TikTok for a few minutes, it's scrolling through Facebook."
The petition needs 10,000 signatures for the Government to respond to the petition.
If the petition hits 100,000 signatures then it'll be considered for Parliamentary debate.