Children are finishing up innocent victims of crime - when their parents are imprisoned.

When parents go to jail children are left behind to be looked after by relatives or taken into care by social services.

The scandal of children being torn away from their parents with little regard for their wellbeing was exposed at a parliamentary meeting last week chaired by Labour's Andy Burnham and organised by charities Pact and Grandparents Plus.

Grandmother Annie told of her shock when her daughter was sentenced, leaving her two granddaughters with nowhere to go.

"No-one believed she'd be sentenced. We thought she'd come home so there was nothing prepared.

"We had to go home and tell the children that mum wasn't coming back. There were tears. I don't think they'll ever recover."

Annie described her two granddaughters as "victims of a system that doesn't care.

"It's not just the courts - there's social services. There's no-one there to help," she told the meeting.

No-one had mentioned the children in court. "I phoned social services and they said they'd provide £50."

Cassie ended up looking after her sister's three children.

"There was no support on the criminal side - I don't think the court was aware of the children," she said.

"When we asked for support we never got it. The children's services failed to provide anything.

"We were the family of the perpetrator, not the victims. Yet the kids had done nothing wrong."

Her sister's case had received a lot of media coverage.

"At one point we had to move 200 miles away," she said. "We were sworn at and spat at in the street. The kids were bullied in school.

"We couldn't deal with it on a daily basis. We preferred to go somewhere we were not known and make a fresh start," Cassie, who was also looking after her own two children, said.

"It was like being caught in the crossfire."

There are around 160,000 children each year with a parent in prison. More than 60 per cent of women prisoners are mothers and 45 per cent had children living with them at the time of imprisonment.

And 25 per cent of men in young offenders' institutions are or are shortly to become fathers.

Pact director Andy Keen Downs told how the organisation first came across the problem when running its First Night in Custody programme at Holloway Prison.

"We found that when the mother was in prison it was grandparents, sisters and friends rather than partners caring for the children. Half the women who had children were not saying they did."

Of those who did declare they had children, 34 per cent of the kids were being cared for by grandparents, 27 per cent by the father and 10 per cent by social services.

Keen Downs says there are gaps in the system.

"There is a lack of a joined-up system to record whether there are children. There is no statutory duty on the courts to check if children or vulnerable adults are involved, and if care needs to be provided."

Sarah Wellard of Grandparents Plus adds: "All too often grandparents, aunts and other family members are left to pick up the pieces on their own.

"It's vital that children's services treat these children as 'in need' and help their carers to access support."

Alan Lowe, a magistrate in Wigan and Leigh, has campaigned on the issue for nine years, since he was asked to look into it by then archbishop of Liverpool Patrick Kelly. The archbishop had noticed children without parents at school gates.

Lowe tells of a recent instance where a head teacher left school at 10pm with a child, trying to find out where the mother was.

"On one occasion I remember being told: 'You're not a social worker - your job is to sentence.'

"Things have got to change. Health, education and local government have to come together and co-operate."

Magistrates Association chairman-elect Richard Monkhouse agrees that we need a statutory requirement that children are dealt with when parents are sentenced, a position also supported by chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick.

Burnham emphasises that when a child goes through something like this the odds are stacked against them.

"Things will never be the same again. We could minimise the damage if we thought more holistically."

Burnham, who notes that children whose parents go to jail are more likely to suffer mental health problems, is taking the matter forward on an all-party basis.

This would involve attempting to get an amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill so that plans addressing children or vulnerable dependent adults are produced ahead of sentencing.

"We'll explore the legislative opportunities to bring an amendment forward," he says. "A plan needs to be put in place for agreement of all related bodies so everyone knows where they stand.

"How can it be right that children end up being the collateral damage?"

Paul Donovan