RADIO celebrity, and World columnist Pete Price has been inundated with calls supporting the Runcorn grandparents who are fighting to keep their grandchild.

Callers flooded the City FM switchboard for two hours when Pete, an adopted child himself, asked listeners for their views on the couple's turmoil.

Speaking exclusively to the World this week, Pete reiterated his support for the couple as the campaign to keep the child gathered pace.

He said: "I would ask for the sake of the child for social services to reconsider this decision.

"The case rests on whether the child is loved and there is no arguement about that. Why wont they relinquish on this?

"As an adopted person, I believe love is the most important thing.

"They are clearly giving the child all the love in the world so maybe social services are overstepping the mark.

"I would like to point out that social services do a fantastic job, but maybe they think too deep.

"Maybe they should consider the old fashioned values where grandparents looked after their grandchildren.

"At a time when women in their sixties are being offered fertility treatment to let them have more children it seems absurd that this couple have had their grandchild taken away when they are fit to look after her.

"If this carries on the child will be scarred.

"How will she feel if she traces her family when she comes of age and discovers, through the media campaign, the fight her devoted grandparents went through to keep her, only for social services to take her away?

"How would anyone be able to cope with that?"

Annie Shepherd, Executive Director at Liverpool City Council said that social service officials decided to take the child early as a result of the media campaign.

She said that there was an arrangement laid down by the court outlining how the child would be introduced to her new family, which the grandparents did not co-operate with.

"When they refused to co-operate it meant my staff had to run through the gauntlet of the media," she said.

"We wanted to protest her identity which is why we wanted to take her away.

"We decided it was not a suitable environment for the child to be in."

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