School and Family Learning

A potted parliamentary history of the signposting of couples

2010-08-02T10:02:00.002+01:00

A potted parliamentary history of the signposting of couples from
register offices - or 'gesture politics' at its worst:

1. Paul Boateng, then Labour Shadow Minister in the Commons for the
Lord Chancellor's Department, begins the argument for the signposting of
couples by Registrars towards marriage preparation on 24th April 1996
during a debate on the Family Law Bill: "At the moment, there is no
preparation at all for civil marriage, and there is absolutely nothing
on the face of the Bill to give any hope whatsoever that that will occur
or is envisaged... The Government also have to come forward with
proposals in relation to preparation for marriage and with proposals
that recognise the need for concerted and focused action to support the
institution of marriage and the family." [Hansard]. The Conservatives
funk it.

2. The Labour Government makes proposals in its "Supporting Families"
consultation for changes in practice at Register Offices to provide more
information and support to couples preparing for marriage.

3. "The Hart Report" recommends more government support for
preventative couple education programmes; reiterates proposals in
"Supporting Families" [The Lord Chancellor agrees with Sir Graham Hart's
conclusion that public funding of marriage support agencies is highly
appropriate and worth-while. The Lord Chancellor has considered Sir
Graham's recommendations in detail, and accepts them. Hansard]

4. "Moving Forward Together", a Proposed Strategy for Marriage and
Relationship Support from the Lord Chancellor's Department reiterates
proposals in "The Hart Report".

5. "Civil Registration - Vital Change" reiterates "The registration
service is ideally placed to act as a focal point for information on
services .... for example on ...... marriage preparation".

6. "Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change" consultation
reiterates earlier proposals and includes "Give responsibility for the
delivery of face-to-face services to local authorities".

7. In the House of Commons debate the Labour Treasury Minister, Ruth
Kelly, says: "In our White Paper, [Delivering Vital Change] the
Government explained that the registration service is ideally placed to
act as a focal point for information about services associated with
births, deaths and marriages, such as ........ marriage preparation
...... I believe that there is a genuine opportunity for local
authorities to develop those services innovatively to meet the needs of
their communities, now and in future. A wider role for the registration
service will improve on the current piecemeal approach by local
authorities and will be underpinned by the proposed national standards."
[Hansard]. But Labour funk it too.

8. At the Conservative Party Conference [30th September 2008] Maria
Miller, Shadow Minister for the Family, announces "Most young couples
now get married in a civil ceremony. Unlike a church wedding, there is
no tradition of pre-marriage preparation for couples marrying at a
registry office. We want that to change. We want local registrars to
start signposting couples to pre-marital education as a matter of
routine. The Local Government Association who co-ordinate the role of
wedding registrars agree and I am pleased to say that they [are] putting
forward this policy so that every young couple getting married will be
made aware of the benefits they would get from relationship support at
this critical point in their life."

9. The Local Government Association publishes posters for register
offices signposting couples to a website the front page of which does
not even mention marriage, let alone preparation for it.

10. The Centre For Social Justice publishes "Every Family Matters"
[July 2009] - ignoring the policy announcement of Maria Miller in
September 2008 - and proposes, "Before being married in England and
Wales a couple should be strongly encouraged by Government to attend a
pre-marriage information course. A note should be made by the registrar
of marriages of those who attend in order to measure effectiveness and
usage." However, the Centre promotes legally enforceable pre-nuptial
agreements which are preparations for divorce. The £4bn a year 'Family
Law' lobby has clearly twisted the arm of the Centre For Social Justice.

11. At the Conservative Party Conference in October 2009 Maria Miller
reiterates her announcement made at the conference in September 2008 but
without elaboration.

12. Speaking to The Sunday Times [27th December 2009] ahead of the
launch of a Labour green paper, Ed Balls announces that his department
is changing the direction and face of [family] policy. "In the past I
think our family policy was all about children. I think our family
policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and
that is important for the progress of the children," he said. .....
While Labour will stop short of saying marriage is 'superior' to other
committed relationships, the new policy will highlight how much better
children fare if their parents stay together.

13. It's just more 'gesture politics', devoid of action.

Chickens come home to roost over bogus and forced marriages

2009-10-07T10:10:00.006+01:00

The arrogance of our ruling classes is breathtaking. They do not listen. Please see earlier posts on forced and bogus marriage.

This is from David and Liz Percival's Weekly Update of UK Marriage News - No 9.37

"Sham marriage boom after judges rule Home Office crackdown is illegal

Sham marriages are booming after judges relaxed laws designed to prevent them, figures show reports the Daily Mail. The number of illegal immigrants who stage fake ceremonies to stay in the country are likely to top 500 this year, the highest level since 2004. Growing abuse of marriage laws appeared to have been stemmed that year after non-EU nationals were told they must apply for Home Office approval before marrying an EU citizen. But last year Law Lords said the rules against fake marriages breached human rights and could deny genuine couples the right to marry.

The figures, an increase of 80 per cent compared with three years ago, were produced by the Home Office and disclosed by More4 News. They showed that there were almost as many suspect marriages in the first six months of this year as in the whole of 2006. In 2004 the Home Office counted more than 3,500 suspect marriages, each involving one European Union citizen with the right to live in Britain, and one non-EU resident marrying to gain the right to stay.

Legislation introduced by former Home Secretary David Blunkett then brought in rules which said non-EU nationals must apply for Home Office approval before marrying an EU citizen. In some cases, a 'fiancé visa' costing £600 was required. However a series of test cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal ended with rejection of the new law by judges. Last summer the Law Lords said the restrictions were unlawful under human rights rules. Baroness Hale, a judge who has now transferred to the Law Lords successor body, the Supreme Court, said that denying the human rights of a couple with a genuine relationship was 'neither a rational nor a proportionate response to the legitimate aims of a firm and fair immigration policy.'

The 3,578 sham marriages in 2004 fell to 282 in 2006. But after the restrictions were abandoned in the wake of the 2008 Lords decision, they have climbed by 80 per cent. There were an estimated 261 fake marriages in the first half of this year, putting numbers on course for more than 500 over 12 months. Senior registrars believe the estimates undercount the true level of immigration cheating through marriage.

Mark Rimmer, director of marriage registration at Brent council in North West London, told More4 News: 'We are seeing a steady increase in the numbers coming through our doors who are producing certificates of approval from the Home Office who have no connection with their partner, sometimes they don't even share the same language with their partner and are unable to communicate with each other in any way apart from through an interpreter.' He added: 'You don't have to be a rocket scientist to think these are not love matches. These are purely for the purposes of immigration avoidance. We are getting reports from every register office that I talk to that they are seeing people in every week, now that means we are looking at a figure in the thousands, not in the hundreds.'"

I suspected that this issue would come home to haunt those who failed to include proper provisions in the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act, but I did not think it would be quite so soon.

Law Lords said the rules against fake marriages breached human rights and could deny genuine couples the right to marry. They were right.

Enforced marriage law forces couple apart where, "Rochelle is about to be deported from the UK and has been told that she will not be able to come back to see Adam until she is 21. She has become the first unintended victim of changes to UK immigration laws which were designed to protect young British Asian women from being subjected to forced marriages."

A problem with the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act - as some of us pointed out at the time - was that it failed in its objective of "protecting individuals against being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent and for protecting individuals who have been forced to enter into marriage without such consent; and for connected purposes." [such as other bogus marriages]

It can now be seen to be preventing couples - with perfectly legitimate credentials - from getting and staying married!

One reason the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act has failed is that it relied upon:

"63Q Guidance (1) The Secretary of State may from time to time prepare and publish guidance to such descriptions of persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate about:

(a) the effect of this Part or any provision of this Part; or
(b) other matters relating to forced marriages.

(2) A person exercising public functions to whom guidance is given under this section must have regard to it in the exercise of those functions.
(3) Nothing in this section permits the Secretary of State to give guidance to any court or tribunal. "

(2) might be a Registrar, but as far as I am aware, the only 'Guidance' issued has been to Health Professionals, including:

"Forced marriage is primarily, but not exclusively, an issue of violence against women. Although throughout this document the term “women” is used to describe anyone who is trapped in, or, under threat of, a forced marriage, much of the guidance can also apply to men. Forced marriage should be regarded as a form of domestic abuse and, depending on age, child abuse. Most cases involve young women and girls aged between 10 and 30, although about 15 per cent of those helped by the Forced Marriage Unit are male."

The principle of guidance for marriage preparation should be in the Act, which should be renamed the Forced and Bogus Marriage (Civil Protection) Act. By the time Health Professionals are involved it is too late.

How can a Registrar - or an official concerned with Immigration and Border Control - distinguish between a couple entering an arranged marriage from a forced one, unless the couple have undertaken a valid assessment with a suitable facilitator who is willing to sign a certificate that he/she believes the couple have completed the programme in good faith?

If we - as a society - wish to change the culture towards respect for marriage, in our legislation we need to be a lot clearer about the implications of how we are going to support the principle "Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses." (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16(2))

I am suggesting additional clauses should be added concerning 'guidance':

(c) Registrars - and Immigration and Border Control Officials - must explain to all couples intending to marry the opportunities and advantages for the parties to participate together in a research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an assessment tool or pre-marital inventory that meets international standards.

(d) this programme is to assist them in preparing for a healthy marriage and to:

1. confirm to the Registrar or deputy Registrar the voluntary nature of their commitment to the marriage, and
2. protect themselves and each other against any possible accusations about the marriage being one that is forced or bogus.

(e) the advantage of obtaining a certificate from the facilitator of the programme of marriage preparation that they have satisfactorily completed both the educational programme and the inventory.

(f) in the event of a Registrar - or Immigration and Border Control Official - being suspicious that the "Marriage [is not being] entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses" the matter must be referred with the evidence [such as a statement from the marriage preparation facilitator as to why he/she cannot sign a certificate confirming that the "research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an assessment tool or pre-marital inventory that meets international standards has been completed" to the appropriate Local Authority Solicitor.

In the SUMMARY OF CONSULTATION RESPONSES during the passage of the Bill - provided by the Odysseus Trust - they referred to:

3.4 Any other changes

The consultation asked for suggestions about any other changes to the Bill. Respondents made various suggestions of other issues relevant to forced marriage, including:

• The need for increased resources to tackle the problem of forced marriage, including for community groups and the voluntary sector;
• The importance of tackling domestic violence, including forced marriage, in a comprehensive, holistic way;
• The need for greater understanding of the obligations of marriage and the voluntary nature of marriage;

Among the proposed amendments was:

63Q Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may from time to time prepare and publish guidance to such descriptions of persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate about—
(a) the effect of this Part or any provision of this Part; or
(b) other matters relating to forced marriages.
(2) A person exercising public functions to whom guidance is given under this section must have regard to it in the exercise of those functions.

This was included in the Act - see above.

However, based on what happened to the attempts to have provision for marriage preparation included in the Family Law Act of 1996, I doubted if anyone except a horse marine would believe people could rely upon the Secretary of State in any government getting around to giving guidance to persons exercising public functions concerning marriage. I was wrong - in the sense that 'guidance' has been issued to Health Professionals [albeit they are scarcely "exercising public functions concerning marriage", but right in the sense that it is the wrong guidance being issued to the wrong people.

The Conservatives will - hopefully - have an opportunity to improve substantially the Forced Marriage [Civil Protection] Act by renaming it the Forced and Bogus Marriage (Civil Protection) Act and by including in it Guidance that requires Registrars to explain the advantages to all couples of undertaking a "research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an assessment tool or pre-marital inventory that meets international standards."

But we have not heard anything yet from the Conservatives to suggest they are even remotely in touch with this issue.

Are 'broken families' responsible for 'Broken Britain'? is a good question

2009-09-26T11:26:00.002+01:00

Are 'broken families' responsible for 'Broken Britain'? is a good question, asked by Mark Easton, BBC Home Affairs editor, at his blog.

He quotes Iain Duncan Smith, "I have always believed that it would be impossible to prove conclusively that simply having a lone parent effects your outcomes as a child and we have never argued that.”

Dave and Liz Percival make some sensible comments at their Weekly Update of UK Marriage News - No 9.35 20/9/09 which can be found at www.2-in-2-1.co.uk

"At first sight the news that children of single parents do as well as those of married parents, both academically and behaviourally may seem like a real blow to some of the arguments for the “benefits” of marriage..... But dig a little deeper behind the bald headline and one finds an important caveat – singleness is OK as long as it is constant, with no new partners entering the scene.... This poses a dilemma for policy makers – shift policy to make re-partnering of single mums less socially acceptable, or support the formation of the most stable family structure before children are born, and ensure it is supported throughout life. Far from being bad news, this [OECD] study to me seems to point to one of the most compelling arguments why the inherent stability of marriage should be high on society’s agenda – the fluidity of modern “serial relationships” is destroying the lives and futures of our kids."

The argument, “support the formation of the most stable family structure before children are born, and ensure it is supported throughout life” seems convincing to me, along with the argument of the OECD which is 'convinced that giving specific benefits to single parents may make matters worse.' "There is little or no evidence that these benefits positively influence child well-being, while they discourage single-parent employment.

In the UK we have tried giving substantial benefits to 'single' parents – many of whom [up to 200,000 according to Frank Field] are not really 'single' but hostesses of 'guest' [often serial] stepfathers – only to find the lives of the children are disrupted to a much greater extent than if they remained genuinely 'single' mothers. Indeed, the rates of child abuse in such 'families' is significantly higher, some studies indicating 33 times greater.

What we have not tried in the UK is to “support the formation of the most stable family structure before children are born, and ensure it is supported throughout life”. Indeed, the status of married couples has been undermined through both the tax and benefit systems, most particularly that of the poorest married couples.

When the Labour government was elected, the Social Exclusion Unit announced that there were eight indicators of deprivation, one of which was 'family breakdown'. However, when the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit and the ONS published the Neighbourhood Indices of Deprivation in 2001 there were only seven of them, plus an Index of Multiple Deprivation, the omission being 'family breakdown'.

No one has given a satisfactory explanation as to why there is no Neighbourhood Index of Domestic and Social Cohesion, nor have politicians or journalists been sufficiently inquisitive to investigate.

Mark Easton quotes the OECD, "There is little or no evidence that these [single parent] benefits positively influence child well-being.... “ At the start of 2009 a Local [Neighbourhood] Index of Child Well-being was published – though not included in the Index of Multiple Deprivation; this was published through the DCLG which is now responsible for the Indices.

So in future, it should be possible to measure changes in 'child well-being'. But I doubt very much if this government will sanction the publishing of an 'index of domestic and social cohesion' for fear that neighbourhoods with low levels of domestic and social cohesion are shown to be much the same as the neighbourhoods with low levels of child well-being.

And that would never do for HMG, and probably not for the BBC either!

Clever Nick Clegg speaking at the 3rd Relate Annual Conference 8th July 2009

2009-07-08T17:52:00.005+01:00

Clever Nick Clegg speaking at the 3rd Relate Annual Conference 8th July 2009 , said:

“The fact that some relationships will fail doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can to make other relationships succeed.”

He trumpeted, “David Cameron’s social policy is focused almost obsessively on marriage, cajoling people to conform to a single view of what a happy couple should look like...... it’s relationships that matter, not signatures on a piece of paper.” He went on:

“But the Labour party is wrong, too, when it ignores interpersonal relationships. When it pretends that family circumstances don’t make a difference to children’s lives. All the evidence shows that it’s better for children to have two parents who get on well together looking after them.”

So he reads some research, when it suits him.

Like other Liberal Democrats he, “attaches real value to relationships, to commitment and to love, but does not seek to limit or prescribe what makes for a strong relationship.”

Hang on a minute! I thought he just said it is wrong to pretend “that family circumstances don’t make a difference to children’s lives.”

Family circumstances – including marital status – do make a difference to children's lives. Harry Benson of Bristol Community Family Trust has updated his earlier research with, “Back off or Fire back? Negative relationship behaviours amongst postnatal married and cohabiting couples”:

“Analysis of marital outcomes amongst 15,000 mothers from the Millennium Cohort Study (Benson, 2006) showed that 6% of married parents had split up by their child’s third birthday compared with 20% of cohabiting parents and 32% of all unmarried couple parents (combining parents who describe themselves as either “cohabiting” or “closely involved”).

Benson’s analysis also found that marital status was the single most important factor in predicting break-up. Demographic factors such as age, income, education, ethnic group and receipt of welfare payments each independently influence the risk of family breakdown amongst new parents. Yet after controlling for these factors, unmarried parents were still more than twice as likely to split up compared to similar married couples.

Analysis of the most recent wave of Millennium Cohort Study data for this paper showed that the risk of breakdown by a child’s fifth birthday had risen to 9% for married parents, 26% for cohabiting parents and 35% for all unmarried couples. The risk of family breakdown amongst unmarried couples with children under five years old is thus four times higher than for equivalent married couples.”

So if clever Nick Clegg is right to complain the Labour party's “wish not to stigmatise single parents has led them to minimise the importance of couples in family life” he is wrong by the same token to ignore the evidence of the significance of marriage in providing more stability in the family life of couples – four times as much for couples with children under five.

Yes, the Conservatives were hoodwinked by the LGA over marriage preparation

2009-07-08T17:42:00.003+01:00

The LGA duly trotted off to see their mates at LACORS who commissioned One Plus One [see previous post] to come up with something to which registrars could signpost couples.

This website http://www.coupleconnection.net/ does not even mention marriage on the front page. It is clearly designed to pander to all the seekers after alternative lifestyles which the Conservatives say they are trying to encourage people to get away from. You have to dig deeply to find anything about marriage preparation.

Is the LGA a quango without political direction? I had fondly imagined that with the majority of councils under Conservative control it would be following Conservative family policies.

A lesson from Australia – are the Conservatives about to be hoodwinked by the Local Government Association over marriage preparation?

2009-04-29T17:49:00.010+01:00

The Honourable Kevin Andrews was elected to the Australian Parliament in 1991. He chaired the House of Representatives Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee (1996–2001), which published 'To Have and to Hold' in 1998. He also served as the Australian Minister for Ageing (2001–2003); Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations (2003–2007); and Minister for Immigration (2007). He is currently Deputy Chairman of the House Economics Committee and Chairman of the Coalition Policy Review. He is married to Margaret, and they have five children. He delivered an address at the International Conference on a Conservative Vision for a Free and Just Society, sponsored by The Heritage Foundation and held in Washington, D.C., on November 19–20, 2008. It was published on the web on 23rd April 2009.

Kevin Andrews concluded “.... there is one lesson that clearly emerges from the events of over a decade. It is that marriage breakdown and child support are the tail that wags the body of family policy. As a consequence, government support for marriage education has been caught in the crossfire of debate about the causes, meaning, and consequences of family breakdown over the past four decades. Numerous inquiries have been conducted, and hundreds of millions of dollars are now expended on the consequences of marriage breakdown. Despite the fact that marriage breakdown costs the nation billions of dollars each year and leaves both men and women substantially worse off, little is spent by way of comparison on prevention. Yet the research indicates that programs of prevention, education, and skills development can enhance the prospects of successful marriage.”

Politicians around the world – with notable exceptions, like Kevin Andrews – are inclined to discount the evidence that supports the efficacy of preventative education. They prefer to spend billions on the consequences of relationship breakdown rather than small sums on prevention.

In the UK, the Local Government Association represents local councils with large workforces. These include many people who work in social services, schools and colleges and are dealing with the consequences of relationship breakdown. In addition to these, police and health workers respond to the consequences of domestic violence and truancy and the other results of disaffection including drug and alcohol addiction. There are vast armies of people whose jobs now depend on - or whose significance is substantially enhanced by - the consequences of relationship breakdown.

Search the web sites of the Local Government Association and its subsidiary LACORS and you will be very pushed to find a reference to any work being done or contemplated to prevent relationship breakdown.

It was surprising, therefore, when a new policy was announced by Maria Miller MP, Shadow Minister for the Family, at the Conservative Conference on 30th September 2008:

"Most young couples now get married in a civil ceremony. Unlike a church wedding, there is no tradition of pre-marriage preparation for couples marrying at a registry office. We want that to change. We want local registrars to start signposting couples to pre-marital education as a matter of routine. The Local Government Association who co-ordinate the role of wedding registrars, agree and I am pleased to say that they (are) putting forward this policy so that every young couple getting married will be made aware of the benefits they would get from relationship support at this critical point in their life. In the US, couples who have this type of pre-marriage education are a third less likely to divorce. We want this type of support for couples to be routine in Britain too."

More predictably, a spokesman for the LGA said recently:

“I believe Maria Miller MP misunderstood the LGA’s position on this. We are broadly supportive of the notion that as a society, we should do more to support committed relationships, including marital ones but not only those, and that this would in particular benefit children where couples are parents. LACORS …. is the part of the LGA that deals with regulatory services and provides information for registrars. Colleagues in LACORS are putting together some guidance for registrars to help them provide information to couples on pre-marriage advice services available in their area. This information is, I understood, due to go out in May this year [2009].”

To return to the experience of Kevin Andrews; he continues in his address:

“In 1980, my wife Margaret and I, along with a small group of like-minded couples, established the Marriage Education Programme in Melbourne. In almost 30 years, we have provided marriage education courses to some 20,000 people. The work is undertaken on a voluntary basis, apart from the employment of an administrative assistant. We receive a small grant from the federal government. Otherwise the work is self-funding. It is an example of a group of people recognizing a need and responding to it. It is an example of how government can support the voluntary sector.
Following the election of the Howard government in 1996, I established an inquiry into strategies to strengthen marriage and relationships in Australia. The resulting report, 'To Have and to Hold', noted the significant costs of marriage breakdown for individuals and society and recommended increased funding for programs of education, skills training, and prevention. The publication of the report was seminal in the discussion of marriage education policy. It was the first time that a legislature had undertaken a thorough review of the field, and it became a stimulus for other policy discussions.
The report led to increased government funding for marriage education and related services, but suggestions for a more equitable basis for the funding were ignored. A pilot scheme of education vouchers was introduced and, although successful, was never implemented universally. More recently, the Howard government established 65 Family Relationship Centres around the country to act as a gateway to family support services. Their introduction had its origins in the ongoing dispute about child support.
Soon after the introduction of a child support scheme in the late 1980s, there was an ongoing campaign against what was seen as an inequitable system, especially towards non-custodial parents, invariably fathers. Soon after my election to Parliament, I was appointed to an inquiry into the scheme. The crossparty committee agreed that there were inequities that should be remedied. Yet within an hour of the release of the report, the then Minister categorically ruled out any substantial change. Apart from the substantive issues involved, the curt response was unproductive.
It was part of the reason, I believe, why child support remained a political issue for so long.The issues had not been resolved when the Howard government was elected in 1996. On regular occasions, government MPs would raise the issue in the Party Room. Many of the MPs complaining about the inequity were women. As a consequence, further inquiries were established, leading ultimately to further reforms and the creation of the Family Relationship Centres.
Whether these centres will fulfil the expectations for them remains to be seen. The government set out a series of key performance indicators at the time of their introduction against which future judgments can be made.”

The Family Relationship Centres can be accessed through Family Relationships Online which:

“provides all families (whether together or separated) with access to information about family relationship issues, ranging from building better relationships to dispute resolution. It also allows families to find out about a range of services that can assist them to manage relationship issues, including agreeing on appropriate arrangements for children after parents separate.”

‘Building better relationships’ presumably includes marriage preparation, but it is clearly a minor service in the mix of ‘dispute resolution’ and ‘arrangements for children after parents separate’.

As Kevin Andrews says

“.... there is one lesson that clearly emerges from the events of over a decade. It is that marriage breakdown and child support are the tail that wags the body of family policy.”

In the UK the Local Government Association spokesman said:

“Colleagues in LACORS are putting together some guidance for registrars to help them provide information to couples on pre-marriage advice services available in their area.”

LACORS have commissioned One Plus One to provide this information. It will be interesting to see whose views it reflects.

Kevin Andrews again:

“I remarked earlier that there is a danger that government can seduce community groups into becoming its mouthpiece. There is also a danger that government will see the voluntary sector as just an extension of itself.”

Organisations working in the field of family relationships can all too easily be ‘seduced’ into following the government line. Some charities in the UK are little more than government sponsored quangos.

Let us hope the Conservative Party learns the lesson of what occurred in Australia and makes sure that its policy is not just “broadly supportive of the notion that as a society, we should do more to support committed relationships” but actually promotes marriage and preparation before it.

On the one hand, David Cameron said at their recent Spring Forum in Cheltenham:

“For example, when it comes to poverty, Labour’s approach is just to treat the symptoms by spending more money.
Our approach is to understand why people are stuck in poverty in the first place, and help them break free by tackling welfare dependency, addiction, debt, poor schooling and above all, family breakdown.
There is no way this country will prosper in the twenty-first century, let alone deal with the debt crisis if we keep asking taxpayers to foot the £100 billion a year bill for the broken society.”

But on the other hand, in 'Rising to the challenge' - The Conservative local government response to the recession – [launched at the same Forum by the Conservative Councillors Association] the report suggests [page 26]:

“Looking at social care for families, for example, there is clear and unequivocal evidence that early, targeted intervention into the lives of families at risk yields better results and has the potential for major savings to the public purse. Under the current system, however, families on the border of social exclusion can be the subjects of multiple interventions from several professionals over the course of years. The results of this failure to solve problems are depressing and the cost to the taxpayer is immense.”

It begs the question “So what do you do when 50% of babies are born to unmarried parents, 200,000 abortions occur each year, and the UK tops the European league tables for most of the statistics that reflect fragile or broken relationships and promiscuity?”

It is a bit late in the day - when there is already a pandemic - to be reacting by relying upon ‘targeted intervention into the lives of families at risk’.

It is surely high time the Conservatives started to explain and - indeed, to implement policies in local councils they control - showing how they propose through prevention to bring about a wholesale cultural revolution to overturn the “every choice of lifestyle agenda” of the Labour government, instead of just bewailing the social and fiscal consequences of the pandemic which have been manifestly obvious for a long time, anyway.

The unequivocal promotion of preparation for marriage would signal a good start towards cultural change, provided that the LGA does not try to subvert the policy and revert to the “every choice of lifestyle agenda” of the Labour government - and its recent predecessors - which has proved such a catastrophic failure.

Michael Gove and the decline of marriage

2009-01-30T07:43:00.004Z

In "Who says the decline of marriage is bad for us all? I do" Michael Gove spells out what he describes as a 'progressive' view of marriage in Scotland on Sunday, 25th January 2009. Here are some extracts:

"Why should adults be corralled into an institution invented by a church in which a majority no longer believe? Why should the personal have to become public? Why should the million different shapes that love can take be forced into the Victorian corset of mouldy vows and mildewed sentiments? Since most couples live together before they marry, and therefore few these days believe that bridal white reflects virginal purity, why go through a charade just to please parents, when the cash could pay for a new kitchen instead?

Given the strength, and gathering force, of this trend, who would dare stand against it? Who would want to be a Holy Willie, twitching and frothing at what young people get up to these days, seeking to apply the morality of a judgmental and prejudiced past in these, more liberal and tolerant, times?

But if no one points out the consequences of the marginalisation of marriage, then some of the most vulnerable in our society will be voiceless. For the drift away from marital commitment is part of a broader flight from responsibility which is weakening our society and hitting the poorest, hardest. Marriage is a constraint, it is a restriction on freedom, a corset or corral in which passions which would otherwise run free are subject to disciplines, and personal satisfaction is subordinated to social expectations. But the reason marriage imposes those constraints is to ensure that selfish adults, especially pleasure-seeking males, are placed within a structure which forces them to live up to their responsibilities towards the next generation. A society which expects men to stay married to the mother of their children is a society which places a premium on providing young boys with male role models who embody the virtues of responsibility, restraint and consideration for others.

Children become mature when they grasp the principle of deferred gratification, the idea that greater prizes accrue to those who are prepared to work, wait and share than to those who wish to eat, shoot and leave. When adults behave like children, seeking instant gratification of their desires, abandoning relationships which no longer serve their purposes in pursuit of new, more intense, pleasure they leave children in their wake who have been deprived of the most valuable of inheritances – stability and security in which to grow to maturity.

These nouns may be abstract, but the problems created by the collapse of commitment are not. When I visit primary schools I am struck by how often headteachers point to the increasing numbers of children who, aged five, are incapable of sitting still and listening, who have not learnt how to communicate even basic thoughts and grow frustrated, even violent, when their needs aren't met. The heads I talk to bracket the growth in the numbers of children arriving at school with these disadvantages with the decline in the number of households where both the birth parents still live together. In a sober, entirely pragmatic way they point out that the absence of responsible male role models has a direct effect on the behaviour of the children.

One of the most striking failures of Government over the last 10 years has been the inability of ministers to promote social mobility and make our society more equal. Improving education is crucial to helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve their potential. But making schools better isn't enough, as any teacher will tell you. The early years matter hugely, and children deserve the care of both the adults who brought them into this world...........

If we're all reviewing our economic perspectives in the wake of the credit crunch, shouldn't we also extend that same process to our most intimate concerns? Shouldn't we see personal relations less through the prism of celebrating freedom and maximising pleasure and more as a means of growing through sharing? Support for marriage should actually be a cause behind which progressives rally. We may promise to wed for richer, for poorer, but we all live in an impoverished society if more and more people choose to put me before we."

On 30th September 2008 at the Conservative Party conference, Maria Miller MP, Shadow Minister for the family, one of Michael Gove's team, announced a new policy:

"Most young couples now get married in a civil ceremony. Unlike a church wedding, there is no tradition of pre-marriage preparation for couples marrying at a registry office. We want that to change. We want local registrars to start signposting couples to pre-marital education as a matter of routine. The Local Government Association who co-ordinate the role of wedding registrars, agree and I am pleased to say that they [are] putting forward this policy so that every young couple getting married will be made aware of the benefits they would get from relationship support at this critical point in their life. In the US, couples who have this type of pre-marriage education are a third less likely to divorce. We want this type of support for couples to be routine in Britain too."

This fits well with what Michael Gove is saying. But where is the action? There has been a deafening silence from the LGA for four months now.

If the Conservatives want electors to believe them, they must show some signs that they mean business.

Families in Britain: an evidence paper

2008-12-31T18:10:00.003Z

The DCSF web site reports, "The family dominates public and policy debate and there is much discussion about the state of family in Britain. This paper assembles the key trends and sets out a framework to think about the family. The paper aims to provide a framework to take stock of family life in Britain and map recent trends and changes as well as explore future pressures on families. It also aims to understand what lies behind headline trends and to understand the implications of these. This paper and the family policy principles it sets out will hopefully stimulate further discussion which will continue to inform the Government's work and underpin the ambition for a truly family-friendly Britain."

My comments on 'Families in Britain: an evidence paper' [December 2008] are set out below. It was published recently by the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit and the DCSF and includes the following:

Page 85 - Marriage is associated with successful outcomes
Page 86 - Lone parenthood is associated with less successful outcomes
Page 87 - Stepfamilies are associated with less successful outcomes than biological two-parent families
Page 88 - Parental separation is associated with a range of adverse childhood, adolescent and adult outcomes for children e.g. in terms of cognitive development, education and labour market disadvantages

Page 85 [married couples] are happier, less prone to depression and suicide and live longer.

Government Ministers have become so accustomed to parroting the mantra "we shall not promote one type of family structure over another", that no matter how strong the evidence to the contrary, they are blind to it, even when it is in their own documents.

Ironically, of course, the government doesn't adhere to this mantra, as it tries desperately to halt the increase in teenage motherhood and the spread of sexually transmitted infections with ever increasing quantities of contraceptives.

If the evidence does not endorse teenage motherhood as a good basis for healthy outcomes for children, why not promote the structure which does, rather than the alternatives that have outcomes closer to those from teenage motherhood?

(The National Statistics [published on the web 28th February 2008] 'Trends in suicide by marital status in England and Wales,1982-2005' Abstract states, "A protective effect of marriage has been observed in a number of previous studies .......... despite changes in marriage patterns over the last 25 years, those who are married still have the lowest risk of suicide, and there has generally been no obvious decline in the difference in suicide rates between those who are married and those who are not.")

You might think with the evidence from a number of studies about the "protective effect of marriage" that the Ministers promoting a report entitled 'Families in Britain: an evidence paper' would want to draw attention to the "protective effect of marriage", but, not a bit of it, the Ministers use the opportunity in their Foreword to calmly spin the evidence away from married couple relationships - which the evidence supports - towards 'diversity', which it does not.

A further example of spin is on Page 99, with "Life Event Marriage/cohabitation"; this is a conflation of two entirely different events, only one of which is to a publicly committed and enduring relationship.

This conflation of marriage and cohabitation lies at the heart of what some bishops are complaining about when they speak of policies that are 'morally corrupt'.

The Rt Revd Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, is reported as saying, "the breakdown of the family is a crucial element in the difficulties of our present society .... The Government hasn’t given sufficient support to that because it is scared of losing votes.... Labour’s failure to back marriage and its “insistence on supporting every choice of lifestyle” ha[s] had a negative effect on society."

An example of this 'negative effect' has been revealed recently: the banks bought into the Government's "every choice of lifestyle" agenda - and created the toxic debt - which now they are too ashamed to acknowledge by publishing mortgage arrears figures by marital status. The previous generation of bankers would never have lent money to cohabiting couples with inherently unstable relationships in the amounts which have been advanced in the last decade. Toxic relationships are behind the toxic debt and the financial meltdown.

On a practical level, the MPs, Graeme Allen and Iain Duncan Smith, are jointly promoting 'Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens'. Please ask your MP to support this initiative.

There is common ground developing across the political spectrum in welfare reform with direct payments and 'Self-Directed Support for every child and young person' as described in "A whole-life approach to personalisation". These principles could be applied to supporting marriage and family life.

The Sub-Prime cohabitation crisis and "The Emperor's New Clothes"

2008-08-17T18:27:00.004+01:00

"An emperor who cares too much about clothes hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a procession through the capital show off his new "clothes". During the course of the procession, a small child cries out, "But he has nothing on!" The crowd realizes the child is telling the truth."

The conflation of cohabitation and marriage - strongly promoted by HMG [Her Majesty's Government] - with its mantra "We shall not promote one type of family structure over another" is bringing its chickens home to roost. HMG - indeed many politicians and City and Wall Street "insiders" - are faced with a dilemma. Do they admit they were inept and have been proved profoundly wrong in their acceptance of the mantra, or do they continue to ignore the research evidence and hope what is a still "a cloud no larger than a man's hand" evaporates?

Cohabiting couples who are in arrears with their mortgage payments have precipitated the mortgage/credit/economic crisis. Why them more than married couples? Well, the research evidence - though not yet conclusive - points in the direction of cohabitants as the culprits. Please follow these links:

[1] "Are the Sub-Prime, Northern Rock, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiascos connected with the increase in cohabitation?" [article and comments]

[2] "Cohabitation is not the same as marriage; most importantly, cohabiting couples break up at a much higher rate than married couples".

[3] "Cohabitation vs. Marriage: How Love’s Choices Shape Life Outcomes" [Top Ten Findings]

The Economist reports "For much of this financial crisis, America’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has cut a pathetic figure, relegated to the sidelines as a hyperactive Federal Reserve tried a variety of creative measures to keep the system afloat. When the market watchdog finally did get in on the act, it was highly controversial: a temporary order restricting short-selling the shares of 19 financial firms deemed systemically important, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two troubled mortgage agencies" [Not to mention Northern Rock in the UK].

The "short-selling" of marriage has been the real scandal, and this goes way above and beyond the Securities and Exchange Commission. All the "Emperors" who have all allowed themselves to be deceived about this will need to address the issue sooner or later. The institution which is "systemically important" is marriage. Attempting to legislate against bucket shop type operations without attending to the real issue is futile.

Lies, damned lies, teenage pregnancy and abortion

2008-06-25T09:28:00.006+01:00

"The number of abortions, including among young girls, has hit a record high, official figures showed.

Procedures to women living in England and Wales have increased across all age groups since records began, the Department of Health confirmed.

Yearly figures showed the number of abortions among girls under 14 rose 21%, from 135 abortions in 2006 to 163 in 2007.

There was also an 11% rise among girls aged 14, from 907 abortions in 2006 to 1,008 in 2007. Furthermore, there were 3,205 abortions to girls aged 15 in 2007, a 9% increase on the 2,948 in 2006.

Among all girls aged under 16, there was a 10% rise, from 3,990 abortions in 2006 to 4,376 in 2007.......

Across all age groups, there was a 2.5% increase in the number of women living in England and Wales having an abortion, from 193,700 in 2006 to 198,500 in 2007, today's figures showed.”

Despite its failure, the sex education lobby is fighting back:

“Based on information from 70% of English Local Authorities, the SEF [Sex Education Forum], the national authority on sex and relationships education (SRE), based at NCB [National Children’s Bureau], found that of the 2,185 schools surveyed, 29% had an on-site sexual health service.

Confidential sexual health services on the school site make it easier for young people to get help with problems early. Health professionals build on what young people learn in SRE by giving young people crucial one-to-one advice about their health and wellbeing as well as access to contraception, pregnancy and STI [Sexually Transmitted Infections] testing services if needed.

Research confirms that the combination of good SRE in schools, linked to easily accessible, confidential, sexual health services is key to reducing teenage pregnancy rates and improving sexual health."

Not surprisingly, this mantra is being echoed enthusiastically and unquestioningly by writers in dozens of newspapers and journals.

But, in a response to comments made by the Government concerning his research

Professor David Paton, an economist at the Nottingham University Business School, wrote:

“In March 2002, a paper was published in the Journal of Health economics entitled “The Economics of Family Planning and Underage Conceptions (Paton, 2002). In this paper, an economic model of rational choice was presented which suggested that “improving access to family planning can have an ambiguous impact on underage conception and abortion rates” (p. 223). In the rational choice model, the reason for this ambiguity is that access to family planning may increase the likelihood of young people engaging in sexual activity in the first place. I tested this model on a panel data covering UK regions between 1984 and 1997. Over this period, I found no evidence that the provision of family planning reduced either conception or abortion rate for the under 16s.”

Professor Paton concluded in his subsequent research paper:

“The discussion in this paper makes it clear that the sources cited by the Government do not support the Government’s assertion that international research contradicts the findings in Paton (2002). Rather, it would be fairer to state clear that the international research has not come to any strong conclusion relating to the impact of access to family planning services on teenage pregnancy rates. The strongest evidence available in the sources cited by the Government, together with evidence from other well-regarded studies, far from being contradictory, is perfectly consistent with the key finding of Paton (2002) that increased access to family planning does not reduce underage pregnancy rates.”

Needless to say, the BBC follows the herd by parroting:

“Government advisers called for high quality sex education at school and investment in contraception services for young people. ............”

Rather than refer to an earlier BBC report:

Dr David Paton, of Nottingham University Business School, said:

"We found that as you increase access to family planning services pregnancy rates for this group either do not change or there is some evidence they go up.

"They certainly don't decrease which is what the government wants. It seems family planning seems to encourage more people to have sex, which teamed with a high contraceptive failure rate can cancel out any gain."

Professor Paton comments:

‘One of the problems with research on sexually transmitted infections is that we only have data on diagnoses and not on actual infections. With some of these infections, most notably chlamydia, there are often no symptoms at all. It could be that the increase in diagnosis rates just reflects the fact more young people are aware about diseases like chlamydia and are getting themselves tested.’

‘In fact, the notable feature about my results is that I found a significantly positive correlation between increases in family planning services and increases both in rates of chlamydia and in rates of those sexually transmitted infections where the symptoms are more noticeable.’

One explanation for these results is that easier access to family planning for young people may have been partly responsible for the increase in risky sexual behaviour among young people. The increase in this risk-taking behaviour may then have outweighed any positive impact of family planning policies.”

On 4th January 2008 Professor David Paton said:

"The underlying social deprivation of an area, family breakdown rates and religion seems to have a greater effect on teenage pregnancy rates than more obvious policies such as sex education or providing access to family planning.

"There has been a tendency for the Government's teenage pregnancy strategy to focus on creating schemes where teenagers can get the morning after pill or other forms of family planning at school or clinics.

"The danger with this sort of approach is that it can lead to an increase in risky sexual behaviour amongst some young people.

"There is now overwhelming evidence that such schemes are simply not effective in cutting teenage pregnancy rates."

Professor David Paton repeated his comments more recently [19th June 2008]:

'Pretty much all the research on school-based family planning clinics suggests they have little or no impact on teenage pregnancy rates.

'There is a possibility that such services change the behaviour of some young people and may increase risk-taking sexual behaviour.'

Fortunately, David Cameron is reacting with more sensible proposals:

“One way is to start early - and insist, for example, that there's no sex education in schools unless it includes relationship education.”

One of the most effective writers is a parent:

“I think if parents are to be successful in raising counter-cultural kids, they need to work out how their kids are going to survive the indoctrination offered by the school system - or else remove them from the line of fire...........

At the top of my mind today is sex education. We had a parents’ evening meeting about it at my childrens’ junior school, and I was frankly outraged at what is being done.As part of this, we were shown a ‘tasteful’ video which the kids were going to see, including a cartoon couple having sex.

If anyone but a teacher were to make my kids watch videos of people having sex, he would be put on the sex offenders’ register.

We were also given a handout which included the claim that ‘Research has shown that sex education helps to reduce teenage sexual activity.’

When questioned the head was unable to refer me to that research - he had simply copied the quotation out of the booklet supplied with the video.

To his credit he was embarrassed to admit this...

On further examination, the booklet offered no reference to research to back up the claim either.

Moreover the booklet was produced by Brook.

Much of the research evidence I have seen suggests that early and explicit sex education is a co-factor with early sexual activity, as is the provision of the services that Brook offers.

In an age of evidence-based medicine it is extraordinary that the response to the failure of the government’s sex education strategy (soaring levels of STDs among teenagers, for example) is to try more of the same....

I had a further meeting with the head, who admitted the school’s policy was a fudge, and I sent him this letter as a follow up...

Dear Mr **********

Sex and Relationships Education

Thank you for making time to see me at such short notice this morning, and also for the courtesy and understanding with which you discussed my concerns.

As I mentioned, [my wife] and I having discussed this further, we would now like to confirm that we will be withdrawing [our children] from all parts of this programme which are not compulsory as part of the National Curriculum.

I thought it might be helpful to summarise those concerns, as you mentioned you may wish to discuss them with the County Advisor.

The primary concern is the ideological one. On one side there are those like me who believe that we should be educating our children for life-long monogamous marriages; on the other, those who want to see children as informed, active, consumers of sex.

If you think I am over-stating the position, look at the www sites for fpa and Brook, where they make their position, including condoning under-age sex, very explicit. They are advocates of children’s right to enjoy their sexuality, and are among the country’s leading campaigners for and providers of abortion.

It is evident that Brook and fpa talk the language of ‘relationships’ to get their material past parents: there is none of that concern in their www sites. But of course any teenager can convince himself that the current infatuation is ‘a meaningful loving relationship.’ That kind of thinking provides no protection against promiscuity - but then it is not intended to.

The middle ground is made up of those who would prefer children to delay having sex and not be too promiscuous, but believe that they can’t be stopped. That risks being a self-fulfilling prophecy, transforming the historical pattern of a very small number of children being sexually active into a much larger number being so.

The evidence on early sexual activity and multiple partners seems pretty clear: the two go together, and are an unhealthy combination, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Oddly, Brook and fpa, who are so keen to deal in fact, ignore these facts absolutely - as they ignore the research which shows that 70% of girls who engage in sex early (pre-16) regret it later on and wish they had waited.

These different ideologies naturally lead to radically different approaches to sex education. I believe sex is private (indeed sacred), and that taboos (and even some things labelled by the government’s experts as prejudices) are often helpful in protecting children from premature exposure to adult issues and from aberrant thoughts and behaviours. The other side believe that anything goes (as long as it is consensual), and that openness and choice are the primary virtues.

Whilst I fully understand that the school has to comply with the government’s directives on this, the government’s view is not the only one, and some research suggests their policy to be ill-founded. I can give you details of that if you are interested (eg Marsilio and Mott’s study, based on interviews with 12000 US children which identified 4 co-factors of teenage sexual activity, of which one was sex education,)

The reason that the government is so keen on pushing this into junior schools seems to be the remarkable failure of it at senior level - indeed the more they push sex education, the more promiscuous the children seem to become with all the attendant physical, emotional and psychological damage that implies. Again, I can supply data showing the increase in teenage promiscuity coinciding with sex education, and also with the existence of Brook Advisory Centres in a locality. For example, those areas targeted by the government with special measures have seen greater increases in teenage conceptions (Oxfordshire 7.3%, Cornwall 16.4% and Torbay 22.4%) I can also supply research questioning the lessons drawn from the Dutch experience (which may be the source for the research cited in the booklet you quoted).

My second major concern is the psychological impact of sex education at this age. The risk is that it disrupts the children’s latency period - a development period widely acknowledged by psychologists when they are not naturally interested in sex. Many psychologists see the disruption of this by sex education as abusive and dangerous. For one psychologist’s assessment of this, see Melvin Anchell’s Killers of Children. I believe our children have a right to stay children and stay innocent, and that the fact that there are commercial interests desperate to turn them into adolescent consumers earlier and earlier should not drive education policy.

The third area of concern is the philosophical one. The whole approach explicitly outlaws any absolute moral teaching (We don’t judge others, we respect the choices of others...) in the sexual realm. It is curious, then, how ready the same non-judgmental policy condemns behaviour of which the government really disapproves (bullying, discrimination). In fact the implicit lesson of this whole approach is that sexual morality is subjective. This begs a massive philosophical question and risks teaching an absolute answer (ironically!) to children before they are even able to comprehend the issues at stake.

It seems to me therefore that the schools are being used by one side of an ideological debate, that the evidence supporting what you are required to do is, to say the least, unproven, and that the government is in effect experimenting with our children with potentially very grave consequences.

I can supply the research references for all the claims made above, if that would be helpful to you. Thank you once more for the time and trouble you took to understand and engage with these concerns and to explain where the school stands and how it intends to proceed.”

Letter ends.

What can we suggest to teachers they might usefully teach about relationships? There are plenty of rich sources within English Literature, History and Religious Studies. No doubt enlightened teachers use the opportunities these provide. Schools should develop a holistic approach, exploring and discussing relationships in the subjects mentioned above, making it a part of the ethos of the school.

For those interested in Jung’s idea of synchronicity, the readings on Sunday from the Common Lectionary were Genesis 21: 8-21 and Matthew 10: 24-39. In the first, Abraham drives out into the wilderness his first born son, Ishmael with his mother, Sarah’s maid, Hagar. In the second, Jesus says he comes not to bring peace but with a sword to divide families. Tough messages. Families are rapidly divided if the members retain tribal attitudes and fail to mature. Children, like Ishmael, become fatherless. All manner of poor social outcomes ensue. We are living with the consequences.

The sex education lobby is a new tribe of delinquents who think they can help people mature by dishing out condoms and morning after pills, despite the evidence to the contrary. When will the experiment end?

Strengthening our society

2008-06-24T07:48:00.003+01:00

David Cameron said in a speech recently:

“The number one challenge we've got in this country today is to strengthen our society. There is no more important way of doing that than strengthening families, and there's nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships...........”

This might be considered to be self-evident, based - on the one hand that much of the press and other media are preoccupied with celebrity weddings and marriage and relationship breakdowns, and - and on the other by the number of bleeding heart journalists and other dignitaries demanding the government tackle child poverty, single parent poverty, fuel poverty, pensioner poverty etc. and then arguing that poverty is the main cause of broken relationships.

If David Cameron is right – and I believe he is – about “strengthen[ing] our society” being “the number one challenge”, and “there's nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships”, one might expect the press and other media to be equally interested in the possible solutions that are being tried and the research that has been done into them.

Not a bit of it; the last thing with which the press and media are concerned is solid research: volatile opinion polls, “Yes”, but hard evidence, “No”!

Despite protestations to the contrary, politicians are not much better than journalists. Take for, example, Maria Eagle, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice in a written answer about domestic violence:

“There is no evidence available regarding the effectiveness of accredited programmes, which are delivered within England and Wales. The drop out rate in the year 2007-08 was 37 per cent. This is an improvement from previous years. We do not hold information for local projects.”

A 37% drop out rate for expensively government funded relationship education programmes with “no evidence available regarding the effectiveness”!

One is entitled to ask why the government is promoting such programmes in preference to marriage preparation and relationship education courses to couples visiting register offices. The drop out rate from marriage preparation programmes is minimal, though the better the research base behind the programme, the higher the chances that between 10% and 15% of the couples will defer or cancel the wedding. The research shows that these couples have a profile similar to those who marry and divorce within three years.

According to the government’s own estimates, domestic violence:

- accounts for 16% of all violent crime
- will affect 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men in their lifetime
- 77% of victims of domestic violence are women
- has more repeat victims than any other crime (on average there will have been 35 assaults before a victim calls the police)
- on average, two women are killed every week by a current or former male partner
- one incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute

The estimated total cost of domestic violence to society in monetary terms is £23 billion per annum. This figure includes an estimated £3.1 billion as the cost to the state and £1.3 billion as the cost to employers and human suffering cost of £17 billion. (Walby 2004).

The estimated total cost is based on the following:

- The cost to the criminal justice system is £1 billion per annum. (This represents one quarter of the criminal justice budget for violent crime including the cost of homicide to adult women annually of £112 million).

- The cost of physical healthcare treatment resulting from domestic violence, (including hospital, GP, ambulance, prescriptions) is £1,220,247,000, i.e. 3% of total NHS budget.

- The cost of treating mental illness and distress due to domestic violence is £176,000,000.

- The cost to the social services is £0.25 billion.

- Housing costs are estimated at £0.16 billion.

- The cost of civil legal services due to domestic violence is £0.3billion.

The statistics collated by Walby above are recognised as an under-estimate because public services don't collect information on the extent to which their services are used as a result of domestic violence ......... The cost of domestic homicide is estimated by the Home Office at over one million pounds: a total of £1, 097, 330 for each death, or £112 million per year.

This is the same Maria Eagle who said:

“we shall not promote one type of family structure as opposed to another”

David Cameron, however, is looking at the evidence:

“In 1996, President Clinton introduced funding for projects that "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families." And President Bush continued, setting up the 'Healthy Marriage Initiative', which funds 'marriage education services' nationwide. For too long, politicians here have been afraid of getting into this territory, for fear of looking old-fashioned or preachy.......

Family breakdown is of course not the only cause of our present social problems. But let me give you just two figures. A child whose parents have split up is twice as likely to live in poverty. And they're seventy-five percent more likely to suffer educational failure.........Of course not every couple needs relationship support - but many more do need it than actually get it. If you have a nagging headache, you go to the doctor. And I want us to de-stigmatise relationship support so people feel completely comfortable, if they have a nagging difficulty in their relationship, in getting help .......... One way is to start early - and insist, for example, that there's no sex education in schools unless it includes relationship education.

...... it's about creating a positive social norm. In plain English - it's about understanding that one of the biggest influences on our behaviour is what we think is expected by the society around us, and what we see other people doing.”

An example of this – a result of the US 'Healthy Marriage Initiative' - includes

“The healthy marriage initiative in Texas is intended to promote free, skills-based marriage education and provide couples with the tools they need to manage the challenges inherent in relationships. Extensive research has shown that couples who receive relationship education have more stable relationships, thereby increasing favorable outcomes not only for themselves, but for their children.

Classes will be taught in various venues around the region and include eight hours of training focusing on communication skills, conflict resolution and the elements of a healthy marriage. Classes will benefit couples who are seriously dating, engaged to marry and those married for any length of time.

Beginning Sept. 1, engaged couples completing the class will have the added benefit of having the $60 of their marriage license fee waived, and they will not have to wait 72 hours to get married.”

It is excellent news that David Cameron is expecting to tackle the issue of relationship education at a much earlier stage than the present government, including its delivery with sex education, which will not be promoted as a single topic.

However, since the Conservatives control the majority of local authorities, what is there to prevent this process of early provision of relationship education from starting now?

Poverty – is it the cause or consequence of family breakdown?

2008-03-05T10:51:00.002Z

Martin Narey is chair of the End Child Poverty coalition and chief executive of Barnardo's. He was formerly head of the prison service at the Home Office. He has been appointed by Nick Clegg to chair the Liberal Democrats' commission on social mobility because he is seen as an independent, expert voice, Andrew Sparrow reported in the Guardian on Monday 3rd March 2008.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/03/welfare.socialexclusion

Guardian: “When Iain Duncan Smith looked at this for the Conservatives, he identified family breakdown as a cause of inequality. Do you think he's got a point or do you think he's barking up the wrong tree?”

Narey: “I wouldn't say he's barking up the wrong tree. I met IDS for the fist time [recently] and I found him enormously impressive. But I would offer an alternative theory, which is that dire poverty leads to family breakdown. Anyone who has brought up children or a family, if you think seriously about what it must be like under such immense financial pressure, I think it's very easy to understand why we have so many marriages that fail.”

In an article in the Daily Mail, James Chapman comments on a study by former Inland Revenue consultants Don Draper and Leonard Beighton, working for CARE. He concludes: "Among highly developed economies, the UK is almost alone in operating a tax system that ignores spousal obligations."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=509438&in_page_id=1770

Professor Rowthorn is quoted as saying: "The system is resented because it is so biased against one-earner couples who wish to look after their own children. There is growing recognition that it penalises stable couples and encourages family breakdown and un-partnered childbearing."

Therefore, in so far as Martin Narey’s theory is correct in pointing to poverty being the cause of family breakdown, it is the bias against marriage in the tax and benefit systems that is bringing about much of the poverty, in addition to inherently unstable “unpartnered childbearing” and childrearing.

In a later article [2nd March 2008], also in the Daily Mail, Steve Doughty reported that Don Draper “examined the income of 98 theoretical couples with different incomes ranging from basic benefits to more than £46,000 a year.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=524381&in_page_id=1770

“His report took into account benefits, rent or mortgage payments, and whether a missing father is paying maintenance. Checks of family entitlements against tax and benefit tables used by the Department for Work and Pensions showed that 75 of the 98 families would be better off apart than together. The analysis - which also took into account the additional costs of running two homes - showed that on average the premium for living apart would be £69. A similar study last year found 71 couples out of 98 would be worse off and the extra cost of living together averaged £63. The worst affected families were those where only one partner worked and the other stayed at home to bring up one child. For them, the extra benefits if the family broke up would be worth £95.62 a week.”

Mr Draper said: "These are very considerable sums for people whose incomes may be less than £300 a week. Breaking the cycle of poverty by encouraging the formation and maintenance of stable families would make a major contribution to reducing long-term poverty. Many social problems seem to have their roots in unstable family structures."

The Labour MP Frank Field has calculated that a single mother with two children under 11 on the minimum wage received tax credits that took her weekly income to £487 if she worked only 16 hours a week. A two-parent family with one earner would have had to put in 116 hours of work on the same pay to get the same money.

CARE's report said the extra cost to the Treasury of a couple choosing to stay apart to claim more benefits this year - of whom there are 1.2million - will average £7,732.

Let’s hope Martin Narey – “an independent, expert voice” - looks first at the numbers with a dispassionate eye.

At much the same time [4th March 2008], the Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill accused politicians of failing the nation's children by conducting an experiment to "downgrade" marriage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/04/nbishop104.xml

He says the "great British experiment to downgrade marriage and the family" was showing no sign of running out of steam.

"Our legislators have got a bit careless and they've not noticed that some of the things they've done have not helped home life in our country.

"The tax system works so that if you get married you are penalised.

“We have been dismantling the institution of marriage and saying to our young people it doesn't really matter if you get married."

It is good to see a public figure like the bishop engaging in this important debate. Thus far it has been like a “phoney war” with very few prominent figures willing to enter it. The result has been that the "great British experiment to downgrade marriage and the family" has continued almost unchecked and without serious debate.

There was a debate in House of Lords on Thursday, 28 February 2008 on “Families, Community Cohesion and Social Action”, but not a single male Conservative peer participated.

In an article in the Guardian, “Marital splits are still costly for mothers” by John Carvel, social affairs editor, Wednesday March 5, 2008:

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2262214,00.html

Dr Paul Dornan, the head of policy and research for the Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Some have argued the tax credit system somehow incentivises parents to live apart, but that argument is hollow - mothers are worse off after relationship breakdown."

No doubt mothers are worse off after relationship breakdown, but it doesn’t alter the fact that many separated parents receive in total more money through the tax and benefit systems than married couples living together. The question is, “is it fair and sensible for the state to give more money to people raising children apart than those who opt to stay together despite their difficulties?”

Standing ovations and obfuscation make for poor marriage and family policies

2007-10-21T06:50:00.000+01:00

Iain Duncan Smith won a well deserved standing ovation for his speech at the Conservative Party conference, but will the Tory faithful get off their seats to take his ideas forward?

Iain Duncan Smith said later:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2592302.ece

“The decline of marriage is a difficult social trend to reverse. It would be too simplistic to argue that a tax break will reverse this trend and we have made 29 recommendations on the subject, including more education on how to sustain relationships.”

Despite this evident common sense, his colleagues and government ministers continue to talk only about tax breaks and not at all about relationship education and support.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm071018/debtext/71018-0004.htm

Theresa May said, “In the latest Government flip-flop, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said: ‘It’s not wrong that the tax system should recognise ... marriage’.

She called on the government to “commit to a debate in Government time on how to support families in the tax system?”

If she is serious, surely the Conservatives will allocate some Opposition time to a debate, as there is no chance – and Theresa May must know it – that the government will want to leave their ambivalent policies towards marriage and the family open to scrutiny.

The previous day Gordon Brown said, “As far as the tax issues are concerned, it is because we recognise marriage in the tax system that we have made the changes that we have on inheritance tax ……….. But as far as children’s tax credits and child benefit are concerned, I believe that the duty of every citizen of this country is to support not just some children in our country, but all children.”

This is very confusing. What Gordon Brown seems to be saying is that it’s Ok for there to be just a little bit of recognition in the tax system for marriage, but when it comes to benefits it’s Ok for the government to squander money on people however tenuous their relationships, even if it means giving 200,000 cohabiting couples benefits to which they are not entitled, there being that number more claimants of single parent benefits than there are registered single parent households.

This makes no sense, especially since in other respects – such as pensions - the benefit system penalises married couples compared with single people. Gordon Brown then starts talking piously about, “the duty of every citizen of this country is to support not just some children in our country, but all children” as if this lets the government off the hook when it comes to supporting families.

It is worth recalling what Paul Boateng said in 1996 during the passage of the Family Law Bill. He was then the Opposition spokesman on marriage for the Lord Chancellor’s department:

http://ww.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199596/cmhansrd/vo960424/debtext/60424-37.htm

“In 1971, in the aftermath of the last great reform of divorce law, Lord Scarman said:

"The law is groping its way towards a new conception of the duties of married life."

The duties of married life have been cast aside. Married life and the importance and value of marriage are being widely questioned. Marriage is undervalued, marriage is not supported, marriage is now something that one can win on a game show.

If one turns on the television on a Saturday night, one can see someone win a marriage. The young couples who walk down the pink staircase--I do not know why the staircase is not white; no doubt pink looks better on television--get more preparation for marriage, in terms of what they will get at the end, than we give them in relation to civil marriage today…..

At the moment, there is no preparation at all for civil marriage, and there is absolutely nothing on the face of the Bill to give any hope whatsoever that that will occur or is envisaged. Are we going to have any assurances about that tonight? That is something that hon. Members want to hear…… The Government also have to come forward with proposals in relation to preparation for marriage and with proposals that recognise the need for concerted and focused action to support the institution of marriage and the family. Only then can hon. Members rest easy in terms of the consequences of their deliberations today.”

Iain Duncan Smith deserved the applause and his standing ovation at the Conservative Party conference earlier this month. Unfortunately the implications of what he is saying are lost on most of his colleagues and on most members of the government. But we must be thankful to Andy Burnham [like Paul Boateng who was also later], Chief Secretary to the Treasury, for keeping the issue in the public consciousness.

Biblical texts to support a political party's family policy

2007-09-29T18:39:00.000+01:00

In his speech to the 2007 Labour conference this week Gordon Brown quoted scripture – “suffer little children to come unto me” [Mat 19 13-15, Mk 10 13-16, & Luk 18 15-17] – in support of Labour’s inclusive policy of all family structures. By implication he was criticising the – as yet to be defined - pro-marriage policy of the Conservatives and its supposed exclusivity.

In the immediately preceding verses of both Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s, Jesus quotes from the book of Genesis, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, they twain shall be one flesh” [Gen 2 24].

In John’s gospel [John 4 1-42] Jesus says to the woman of Samaria, “Go call thy husband and come hither.” The woman answered him and said, “I have no husband”. Jesus said unto her, “Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband”.

Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’, but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” [Mat 5 27-28].

At the end of the story of the woman caught in adultery [John 8 1-11] whom he saved from being stoned to death, Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more”.

Forgiving the sinner is not to condone the sin. By no stretch of the imagination can the policy of Jesus towards marriage and the family be described as one that is tolerant of promiscuity.

In line with the foolish virgins in the parable [Mat 25 1-18], Gordon Brown and his colleagues are exhorting their followers to make no preparation for marriage.

There will be free condoms, the NHS to conduct abortions – more readily available than maternity services - and the welfare state to bale the promiscuous out of any hole into which they dig themselves, and larger benefits for unmarried than married couples.

While the foolish virgins went off to buy oil for their lamps “the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage; and the door was shut”.

The wise virgins of the parable couldn’t give the foolish virgins some of their oil for the lamps because it was spiritual capital and cannot be transferred, it must be acquired. Labour’s mistake is in imagining that any wrong can be righted by taking value from one party and giving it to another. But the things of greatest value cannot be gifted away.

By distorting scripture Labour is promoting a society which is unprepared for the realities of life.

Will the Conservatives be able to get their theology right?

David Cameron’s call, “men [must] realise that having children is an 18-year commitment - not a one-night stand”.

2007-08-31T08:47:00.000+01:00

He went on to say [The Tory leader's speech at Sudellside community centre in Darwen, Lancashire, on youth crime and measures to reduce it - Wednesday August 22, 2007 - Guardian Unlimited]:

“We need to make mothers realise that it's work, not welfare, that offers their family the best future. We need to help couples stay together, not drive them apart with the tax and benefits system. And we need to make society as a whole - that's you and me - realise that we all have duties to our neighbours. These are duties as compelling as the taxes we pay and the laws we obey. They represent a social responsibility. For me the most exciting development that is happening in Britain today is the growth of social enterprises and other voluntary bodies dedicated to social justice.”

And Peter Fahy, chief constable of Cheshire’s comment, “public was right to think that antisocial behaviour was out of control” in The Guardian (Monday August 20, 2007) follows an article the previous week. He argues, “the system [is] failing to tackle the underlying causes of crime ……. [including] family breakdown”.

In an article [16th August 2007] in The Telegraph, ‘Alcohol ban is no answer; proper policing is’ David Green, Director of Civitas, writes: “children are more likely to stay away from crime if both biological parents are committed to their well-being”.

“…. there is no getting away from the fact that children are more likely to stay away from crime and to lead fuller lives if both their biological parents are committed to their well-being during the two decades it takes to grow up. Solving that problem is beyond most of us.”

Now David Cameron has also weighed in with, “More Government support for families and better male role models are the best ways to combat the yobs who are causing “anarchy in the UK” [Telegraph 21st August 2007].

The problem can be solved with determination, the application of the available statutory powers (Fixed Penalty Notices), modern technology (texts to mobile phones, e-mail, Digital TV), and engagement by schools with parents in the social, emotional and behavioural development of the pupils.

One solution available within the UK, brings parents, children and schools together. By using talk2me (www.talk2me.org.uk) schools and families can monitor social, emotional and behavioural development over time by taking the online inventory each year. What is required is the will to bring together the complementary strands of intervention and to treat the issue of family breakdown holistically.

Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Cheshire writes, “a fundamental rebalancing [is] needed for the criminal justice system - away from simply concentrating on punishment towards more rehabilitation and offers of help, backed up by sanctions for those who [refuse] to change their behaviour.”

There is a strong correlation between truancy and future criminality. Local authorities [especially those under Conservative control!] and local crime reduction partnerships could be tackling this problem now with the same zeal that is being directed against the owners of illegally parked vehicles - with FNPs (Fixed Penalty Notices) and clamping.

However, if the main focus is punitive, it won’t work. Follow-up supportive measures are crucial too:

1. An individual re-integration plan for each child picked up during a truancy sweep combined with FNPs (£50 if paid in 28 days, £100 in 42 days) would change the culture of truanting, in some areas, to one of regular school attendance.

2. A whole school approach to measuring change in social, emotional and behavioural development, together with a programme engaging parents in this process – possibly as part of the extended schools programme - would change the culture prevalent, in some areas, from antisocial to social behaviour for all pupils and parents. Targeting a few parents will alienate them. A universal programme will not.

There are now 50,000 truants each school day in the UK and one million pupils who have been truants during the year. There are 16,000 PCSOs (Police Community Support Officers) and strong teams of EWOs (Education Welfare Officers) and other staff in schools and local authorities tasked with combating truancy and antisocial behaviour.

There are schemes such as Truancy Call and Teachers2Parents for engaging with parents. These allow school staff to make first day contact with parents of absentees via automated phone call, text message and email, parents can then respond in the same way.

Examination of data from 2004 shows a strong correlation between average absence levels in schools and their pupils’ attainment. For example:

88% of pupils gain 5 or more good GCSE grades at schools with average absence of 8 days or fewer per pupil. But only 26% at schools with average absence of more than 20 days per pupil; and

86% of pupils reach Key Stage 2 Level 4 Maths in schools where pupils average fewer than 8 days absence a year but this drops to 57% in schools where average absence is more than 15 days.

The 2004 Youth Crime Survey showed that 45% of young people in mainstream education who have committed an offence say they have played truant from school, compared with just 18% who have not committed an offence. It also showed that 62% of 10-16 year olds who have committed criminal or anti-social behaviour have also truanted.

Section 115 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 ensures that education authorities have a legal power to disclose information – such as the names of persistent truants - to the police officer/police community support officer for the purpose of a truancy sweep. The requirements of the Data Protection legislation need to be taken into account in exercising this power, and certain other requirements. The best way to ensure these requirements are satisfied is by using carefully drawn up protocols between the education authority and the police.

Where appropriate, EWOs, Connexions Personal Advisors, learning mentors and school pastoral staff should aim to work together to create an individual re-integration plan for each child picked up during a truancy sweep. Police officers/police community support officers have the power to return truants to their school or to a local authority designated place.

Schools using schemes like www.teachers2parents.co.uk can provide much of the intelligence that is needed to make daily or frequent sweeps effective, for example, details of:

- regular non-attenders who are absent;
- pupils who are legitimately out of school; and
- dates of training days and other school closures.

Suresh Patel says, “Schools across the country using www.teachers2parents.co.uk have seen a huge reduction in truancy.”

Seamus Ryan, principal of Dunshaughlin Community College, a mixed school with 930 pupils has commented: “By installing Truancy Call we can manage absences more effectively and encourage parents to notify us about the whereabouts of their child. One of the real benefits of Truancy Call is that it alerts parents immediately, should their child be absent for any reason.”

Mr Ryan continued, “It gives parents the opportunity to inform the school directly of the reason for the absence and the likely duration, reducing the workload for teaching in collecting and recording absence notes.”

Using Truancy Call, the school carries out registration as normal each morning. Once finished, the system automatically calls, texts or emails parents until a response is received. Once a response is received and a voice message recorded no further calls are made, until the start of the next absence.

Using talk2me throughout the school as a regular online survey can enable the relevant staff and all parents to measure changes in social, emotional and behavioural development by pupil, class, and year group, under the headings of the ECM (Every Child Matters) agenda. If parents participate – and in future this should be possible with mobile phones or digital TV - facilitators or mentors can engage with individual pupils and families to enable them to discuss issues important to them, and to evaluate their progress during their time at school.

There is no single programme or intervention that will solve the problem of truancy. But several of these together will have a very significant impact on it. The knock on effects in terms of improved behaviour and better exam results can be considerable.

There's certainly been a dramatic improvement in exam results over a very short period (at Ladymead Community School in Taunton). Ladymead's head, Mark Trusson, ……. says: "Use of ICT and our school management systems combined (including Truancy Call) has been a powerful system for improving school performance, linked to teaching and learning. Our results (children gaining five As to Cs at GCSE) have improved from 54% in 2005 to 64% in 2006."

Ofsted report on social, emotional and behavioural education

2007-08-13T15:20:00.000+01:00

One finding from the Ofsted report [July 2007] was:

“Most schools reported that they did not have sufficiently detailed information at the beginning of the pilot. Schools expressed a wish to receive materials in electronic form, with hyperlinks to more detailed research about developing social, emotional and behavioural skills.”

Affintities is pleased to suggest teachers visit www.talk2me.org.uk where they will find a useful online programme for assessing individual pupil needs and for measuring progress by pupil, class and year group in social, emotional and behavioural skills.

An earlier report by Ofsted on Sex and Relationships Education [April 2002] recommended that pupils should be taught more about values, not just facts.

The Ofsted report Time for Change? on PSHE [April 2007] contained the following:

"At times, it is the school rather than the home that provides the moral code and, in its absence in the home, some children are put under additional pressures."

"Parents’ greatest challenge is to set clear expectations, and to be aware of and to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour. Some parents do not rise to this challenge."

"the ability to make moral judgements about what to do in actual situations and the potential to put these judgements into practice"

"Most of the schools in this survey ensure that their aims and values are well known to pupils and their parents, and that they are adhered to consistently. They will often refer to personal morality, the effects of actions and choices, and the nature of relationships concepts very relevant to SRE. However, some of the schools visited need to broaden their coverage of SRE and clarify what they mean by achievement in this area, so that it includes developing pupils' values and attitudes....."

"focusing on a pupil's individual needs and avoiding a one size fits all approach......... trying to bring together the work of mentors, counsellors and external support agencies with individual pupils and, if appropriate, with their families"

Now the Ofsted report “Developing social, emotional and behavioural skills in secondary schools” [July 2007] moves the debate on further. This report is based on visits to 11 schools selected from 54 in 5 local authorities that have adopted the Secondary National Strategy pilot programme for SEAL [Social and Emotional Learning]. There are some interesting findings:

The impact on pupils included:

“- more settled behaviour
- less demonstration of egocentric behaviour
- a greater willingness to persist with tasks they found difficult”

In one school, “Exclusions from the group dropped by 90% and relationships among pupils were improved greatly.”

Generally:

“After five terms, the greatest impact in the schools was on teachers’ attitudes towards the idea of social, emotional and behavioural skills and their understanding of how to develop these skills systematically within subject lessons.”

“Some teachers initially showed resistance to the initiative: they expected an increase in workload or had reservations about the extent to which developing pupils’ social and emotional skills should be part of the teacher’s role.”

“…. schools found it difficult to analyse their pupils’ specific social, emotional and behavioural skills needs and struggled to find an appropriate starting point ……..”

“The programme for developing social, emotional and behavioural skills was introduced most successfully when senior leaders understood its underlying philosophy. Where this was not the case, it remained a ‘bolt-on’ to personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons or form tutor time and was largely ineffective.”

“Developing social, emotional and behavioural skills was most successful in schools with a strong and clearly articulated ethos. More than half the schools in this small social, emotional and behavioural skills survey found that it helped them to revisit their values and articulate them more clearly.”

“The pilot’s greatest impact was on developing teachers’ understanding of pupils’ emotional and social development.”

“Almost all the schools initially emphasised behaviour. Understanding how to develop pupils’ social and emotional skills, and the planning to do so, came later.”

“All the schools found it difficult to evaluate the impact of the work. Even where the work was successful, schools often found it difficult to disengage what had been achieved through the programme from other initiatives. Where the work had not been integrated with broader school improvements, its influence was negligible…….”

“The pilot was most effective when senior leaders made time for staff to discuss and reflect on their own social, emotional and behavioural skills. This was potentially contentious but, nonetheless, important.”

“… where the philosophy was not understood, social, emotional and behavioural skills work remained a ‘bolt-on’ to PSHE lessons or form tutor time, rather than being taught across the curriculum, and was largely ineffective.”

“Towards the end of the survey, schools were asked whether they planned to continue with social, emotional and behavioural skills work when the pilot finished. All but one intended to do so, and almost all had clear plans about the next steps. Even in the schools which implemented the programme most effectively, it was clear that social, emotional and behavioural skills development needed to be continued for a significant period of time before it would have an impact on pupils’ skills.”

“Evaluating success challenged even the most effective schools. Throughout the pilot, schools found it difficult to evaluate the impact of their work in developing social, emotional and behavioural skills and the guidance from the Secondary National Strategy was not clear or detailed enough about monitoring and evaluation.”

www.talk2me.org.uk enables schools to promote and evaluate changes in social, emotional and behavioural development and to engage with parents in improving their understanding of this important subject. Affinities welcomes the latest Ofsted report.

Conservative peer moves to support well-being in the community

2007-07-29T08:12:00.000+01:00

In a House of Lords debate on Wednesday, 25 July on the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, Lord Bruce-Lockhart proposed a new clause to allow local authorities to take full responsibility and have full powers for the issues of worklessness and welfare dependency.

“The amendment seeks to allow local authorities and their partners in the private, community, social enterprise and voluntary sectors to work together to tackle these all-important worklessness issues. They need to work together and harness the capacity within communities to support people through carefully supported steps and allow them to get back into employment, to have greater independence and more fulfilling lives. The amendment seeks to allow this to happen through community strategies.”

Baroness Andrews (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government) replied: “I hope the noble Lord will not be too disappointed when I say that, although I understand why he feels passionately and we share his commitment to reducing worklessness and creating opportunity, his chosen method is not easy for us to accept…… and we would not want to open up more opportunities for local authorities to spend randomly…… Along with the well-being power, opportunities have recently arisen for local government to use new powers. I do not think that this Bill is the right place to take forward major legislative changes in the way that the noble Lord suggests, although, as I said, I am sympathetic to his reason for wanting local authorities to be able to address these very stubborn and difficult problems locally.”

Lord Bruce-Lockhart responded: “I thank the noble Baroness for her reply. I am grateful that she shares my objectives and motives, and I hope that we can continue to discuss this matter. I was not sure that I agreed with her when she said that equity means that we have to have a national system. One problem with a national system is that it tends to be a Whitehall, one-size-fits-all, top-down system. We need systems to be locally tailored to local circumstances and to individual circumstances. I do not totally accept that this is just about being more ambitious with the power of well-being. In the United States, where individual states picked up President Clinton's very bold welfare reforms and were able to bring in their own powers, we could see that devolution made a real difference on the ground. As I said, I am grateful for the Minister's response and I hope that we can continue to discuss this issue.”

The Conservatives control the majority of local authorities in England. It is good to see a Conservative peer trying to influence the ways in which they tackle well-being in the community.

Earlier [11/7/07] Affinities welcomed the Conservative plan for an index of family and social cohesion from Iain Duncan Smith’s Social Justice Policy Group:

“A new statistical index of family and social cohesion ……. Such an index would make individual local authorities accountable for addressing family breakdown in their boroughs.”

The SJPG report pointed out: “In 1998, the government consultation paper Supporting Families proposed a range of measures to strengthen marriages and families (such as wider roles for registrars in the provision of marriage preparation and information) but nine years later, very little government policy is directly preventative of family breakdown and lone parent family formation has, over the last quarter century, consistently increased by 40,000 families per year.”

The report backs up the proposal for an index with an excellent idea for extending the role of the commissioner for parenting services:

“Robust local government support of relationship and parenting education - Just as local authorities must have a single commissioner responsible for assessing need and co-ordinating delivery of services to parents, a senior ‘champion’ should also be similarly responsible for relationship education (with the same degree of importance placed on that aspect of their role).”

With the index in place to measure the effectiveness of local authority performance, it would soon be possible to see which local authorities are being successful in improving family and social cohesion and outcomes for children.

It is sad that Baroness Andrews - for the government - could only respond feebly to Lord Bruce-Lockhart’s amendment with, “we would not want to open up more opportunities for local authorities to spend randomly……. I do not think that this Bill is the right place to take forward major legislative changes in the way that the noble Lord suggests.”

Unmarried parents - "Why can’t they be left alone?"

2007-06-18T11:17:00.000+01:00

Labour’s chaotic approach to relationships for unmarried couples by John Elliott and Claire Newell in The Sunday Times 17th June 2007

"Last week Frank Field, the Labour MP and expert on welfare reform, produced a new analysis of how the [Labour] government’s complicated tax credits and benefits system affects different types of family.

Field found that the system “brutally discriminates against two-parent families”. Startlingly, Field showed that while a lone parent with two children has to work 16 hours a week on the minimum wage to earn £487, a couple with two children would have to slog away for 116 hours.

“I can’t believe the [Labour] government, when it set out, thought this would be the effect,” said Field, adding that there is now a “huge disincentive” for single parents to find another partner, because to do so would incur a large drop in income for both of them.

“There is also a disincentive for two-parent households to tell the truth,” said Field, noting that last year it had emerged that the [Labour] government was paying tax credits or welfare benefits to 2.1m lone parents – 200,000 more than its own official figures said exist. "

But what is really new about this? Lord Stoddart of Swindon, Independent Labour Peer, said about the Conservative Government in a debate on the Family Law Bill [11th January 1996]:

"The [Conservative] Government have been saying over a long period of time that they support the family and marriage, yet all their actions belie that claim. For example, the taxation system - on the pretext of achieving equalisation between the sexes - has progressively worked against marriage. Everyone in the House knows that that is true.

The freezing until the last Budget of the married man's allowance and reducing its value from 25 per cent. to 15 per cent., the refusal to allow the transfer of the personal tax allowances between spouses and from one working spouse to a non-working spouse - thus failing to assist those wives who wish to do so to remain at home and look after their children - has actually been destructive of the family.

My noble friend said that that argument is nonsense. Of course, it is not nonsense. A burden has been put on the family that almost forces both spouses to go out to work. It is a system designed to encourage women to go to work rather than remain at home and look after their own children.

Indeed, as we all know, the social security system itself favours the single parent in many ways, even to the extent that it is financially more favourable for fathers and mothers to live apart. No one can deny that that is happening under the present system.

The impression has been given to women that they do not need a stable relationship with the father of their children as the state will provide. That has all been done under this particular [Conservative] Government who say that they want to retain marriage as a strong institution.

Of course the impression has been given to fathers that they need not worry too much because the state will pick up the tabs.

The social consequences of the single parent family - poverty, crime, deprivation, lack of education and unemployment - are all evils which affect the children of single parent families along with the fiscal and social policies of the [Conservative] Government which have all exacerbated the problems."

Politicians across the political spectrum have been undermining the institution of marriage for a generation. What will make them stop doing this?

"Tough [illegal] rules expose scale of bogus marriages"

2007-05-30T16:37:00.000+01:00

by By Duncan Gardham in The Telegraph 16/05/05

"Since the Asylum and Immigration Act came into force in February [2005] the number of marriage applications at some offices has dropped by 60 per cent.

........ Mark Rimmer, the superintendent registrar at Brent, north-west London, who is on a Government working group, said: 'There has been a significant decrease throughout London.

"In Brent we have seen a huge decrease - 60 per cent in February and March. It is nothing short of remarkable. We had suspicions about roughly 20 per cent of marriages but we could only report them where we had concrete evidence. It now seems that figure was an underestimation.

"The decrease in applications has been significantly higher and that suggests, perhaps, that the estimate of bogus marriages was a gross underestimate."

.......... Karen Knapton, the general secretary of the Society of Registration Officers, said: "If people really want to get married they will persevere but the new regulations have highlighted the scale of bogus marriages. Register offices, especially in London, have been very quiet.

"We have been asking what nationality applicants are for two years but we have been aware that crime rings have been making a lot of money out of sham marriages.

"It has been no fun when we know people have been using marriage to get around immigration laws. It has made a mockery of our job."

Now [May 2007] that the Court of Appeal has held that the rules the Home Office brought in to stem the flow of bogus marriages are illegal, and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill is proposing remedies for forced marriages, surely it is high time to take a holistic view marriage and of the plight of Registrars rather than just a piecemeal view relating to some minority groups?

Let us return to what Ruth Kelly said in 2002:

"In our White Paper, [Delivering Vital Change] the Government explained that the registration service is ideally placed to act as a focal point for information about services associated with births, deaths and marriages, such as ........ marriage preparation ...... I believe that there is a genuine opportunity for local authorities to develop those services innovatively to meet the needs of their communities, now and in future. A wider role for the registration service will improve on the current piecemeal approach by local authorities and will be underpinned by the proposed national standards."

Nobody needs to eat their words, just get on with Delivering Vital Change!

"........ demand that the Conservatives introduce strong pro-family policies"

2007-05-28T10:08:00.000+01:00

by Peter Oborne in the Daily Mail

"The problem for Cameron is this: there are much more important decisions coming up over the course of the next 12 months, and this week’s grammar school row simply opens the question whether he has the strength to push them through.

In December, Iain Duncan Smith’s Social Justice Commission is due to bring to a culmination two years’ dedicated work into the causes of crime in Britain.

It is likely that Duncan Smith (whose former lieutenant Tim Montgomerie has been a leading protagonist of the grammar school revolt) will identify family breakdown as the main cause of social collapse, and demand that the Conservatives introduce strong pro-family policies.

If so, David Cameron will be forced to choose between offending Conservative activists, and offending conventional opinion. If he fails to rally behind the traditional values of support for the family, he will face an internal row many times bigger than the one over grammar schools."

David Cameron has said the Conservatives must support marriage and the family, but - so far - there has been no sign through Conservative controlled local authorities that they are actually doing anything now specifically towards this.

The LGA [Local Government Association] has not been demanding that the ONS or its successor publish a Social Capital Index like the Retail Price Index, so that changes in social and domestic cohesion by neighbourhood can be measured by local community leaders and in order that local authorities can be ranked in terms of the improvements that are being made.

Shadow Conservative Ministers are not proposing amendments to the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill to promote healthy marriages and to prevent bogus marriages from taking place.

Thus far, action - or, rather, inaction - belies the words.

It is true that the Conservatives are hinting at tax breaks for married couples with families. But they have made such proposals before in the election manifesto only to drop them again before subsequent elections, so why should anyone believe them? When pro-family policies are being implemented by Conservative local authorities, the necessary credentials will start to emerge.

David Cameron is right to be talking about social responsibility, but he will only be believed when the Conservatives demonstrate that they want social and domestic cohesion to be measured, otherwise it is an empty phrase. People want to see where social capital is being built up and what programmes are helping to achieve it.

If the Conservatives don't want to measure social capital and aren't prepared to promote any programmes when the opportunities arise - such as by proposing amendments to the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill and the Statistics and Registration Service Bill - for improving marriage and family life, electors are going to remain sceptical about whether Conservative hearts are really in the issue and their stomachs ready for the fight.

Peter Oborne is correct in saying:

"If he [David Cameron] fails to rally behind the traditional values of support for the family, he will face an internal row many times bigger than the one over grammar schools."

Rules to stop 'sham' marriages unlawful

2007-05-26T06:27:00.000+01:00

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor - Daily Telegraph

"Tough rules to stop illegal immigrants using sham marriages to get in to the country were declared unlawful by the Appeal Court yesterday. Judges said regulations brought in two years ago to block thousands of alleged ''marriages of convenience'' breached human rights laws............
The Appeal Court - upholding an earlier High Court ruling - said this was a "disproportionate interference'' in the human right to marry. Lord Justice Buxton said the scheme could only be lawful if it prevented sham marriages intended to improve the immigration status of one of the parties. "To be proportionate, a scheme must either properly investigate individual cases or at least show that it has come close to isolating cases that very likely fall into the target category,'' said Lord Buxton. "It must also show that the marriages targeted do indeed make substantial inroads into the enforcement of immigration control."

Much of the problem is caused the the Government's failure to adopt a holistic approach towards couple relationships. It presents a hostile attitude towards every aspect of marriage. Instead of trying to promote 'healthy marriages', like the Americans, the UK Government is trying merely to prevent bogus marriages, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy etc..

The Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill needs an amendment [see earlier posts]. Engaged couples should be invited by Registrars to complete an internationally approved programme of marriage preparation such as one of those that meet the criteria of the US government's Healthy Marriage Initiative. At least 2 are available in the UK.

The judges said the Home Office was within its rights to stop sham marriages but it would need to legislate in "a proportionate manner". They said that could mean properly investigating individual cases.

If a couple decline to participate in one of the approved marriage preparation programmes suggested by a Registrar or member of the clergy and the celebrant is suspicious the proposed marriage is bogus, he/she would be behaving in "a proportionate manner" in declining to marry the couple and in referring the matter to the Home Secretary.

"The love of a good woman" - by Revd Dr Alan Billings

2007-05-21T11:54:00.000+01:00

Thought for the Day, 21 May 2007 by Rev Dr Alan Billings

I recently visited a Young Offender Institution. I talked to older teenage lads about their life before custody, to which they would soon return. Even allowing for exaggeration, their stories were disturbing - families without fathers, abuse and violence, absences from school, gangs and drugs. I asked one of the prison officers - whose whole life had been in the Prison Service - what he thought was powerful enough to change the patterns of behaviour they described. His answer took me by surprise. I thought he might say, 'They need to learn basic educational and social skills', or, 'They need a job' - both of which are important. But, after pausing, he said, 'I only know two things that are that powerful: the love of a good woman and religion'. He had seen young men change because they wanted to keep the love of a girl who didn't want a boyfriend whose behaviour got him into trouble with the law. He had seen others change under the influence of a religious faith. I should add that he had no idea that I was a priest. Now, although I don't doubt the truth of what he said, it does present those who are concerned in any way with policy-making with a difficulty. There is no way that the Youth Justice Board or the Prison Service can supply either girlfriends or religion.

But the Youth Justice Board and the Prison Service - and schools and youth groups - can provide access to tools - like talk2me - together with mentors who can help young people make sensible choices. Those who do are more likely to attract "the love of a good woman " and in doing so they are also more likely to find "religion".

Education: Community Cohesion - Schools told to bring parents together

2007-05-16T06:23:00.000+01:00

Education: Community Cohesion - Schools told to bring parents together by Nancy Rowntree, 16 May 2007 in Children Now.

"Schools will need to work with parents to improve community cohesion under Government guidelines published last week.

Draft guidance on the new duty to promote community cohesion, which comes into force in September, outlines how schools must bring parents from different backgrounds together, as well as pupils.

The guidance says schools need to consider good partnership activities including "bringing parents from different backgrounds together through parenting and family support and community use of facilities for activities that take place out of school hours".......

Meanwhile parenting groups welcomed the proposals to get parents more involved. Jan Fry, deputy chief executive of Parentline Plus, welcomed the proposals to bring different communities together but said it must be done in a sensitive way. "I would hope that schools would partner with community groups in order to make it work," she said. "And schools taking this on by themselves is a huge responsibility, particularly if there is no extra funding for outreach work."

This is an opportunity for Community Family Trusts which are trying to build up local social capital to introduce schools to services that will help to develop social and domestic cohesion through parenting courses and assessment tools such as talk2me.

talk2me is a tool for measuring progress in social and emotional education in line with the Every Child Matters agenda which can also be used with parents.

Why the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill should include a clause about marriage preparation

2007-04-27T17:31:00.000+01:00

The Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill should include specific guidance towards marriage preparation and not rely upon the Secretary of State to publish it.

I am suggesting additional clauses should be added to section 2 of the draft Bill concerning 'guidance', which starts with 2 (a) the difference between arranged and forced marriage:

(e) the opportunities and advantages for the parties to participate together in a research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an assessment tool or pre-marital inventory that meets international standards.

(f) this programme is to assist them in preparing for a healthy marriage and to:

confirm to the Registrar or deputy Registrar the voluntary nature of their commitment to the marriage, and
protect themselves and each other against any possible accusations about the marriage being one that is forced or bogus.

(g) the advantage of obtaining a certificate from the facilitator of the programme of marriage preparation that they have satisfactorily completed both the educational programme and the inventory.

the purpose of the Bill is described as:

“Make provision for protecting individuals against being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent; and for connected purposes.”

In the SUMMARY OF CONSULTATION RESPONSES provided by the Odysseus Trust they refer to:

3.4 Any other changes

The consultation asked for suggestions about any other changes to the Bill. Respondents made various suggestions of other issues relevant to forced marriage, including:

• The need for increased resources to tackle the problem of forced marriage, including for community groups and the voluntary sector;
• The importance of tackling domestic violence, including forced marriage, in a comprehensive, holistic way;
• The need for greater understanding of the obligations of marriage and the voluntary nature of marriage;

Among the proposed amendments is:

63Q Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may from time to time prepare and publish guidance to such descriptions of persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate about—
(a) the effect of this Part or any provision of this Part; or
(b) other matters relating to forced marriages.
(2) A person exercising public functions to whom guidance is given under this section must have regard to it in the exercise of those functions.

Based on what happened to the attempts to have provision for marriage preparation included in the Family Law Act of 1996, I doubt if anyone except a horse marine will believe people can rely upon the Secretary of State in any government getting around to giving guidance to persons exercising public functions concerning marriage.

As evidence for this view, in an earlier debate [4th November 2002] Ruth Kelly said:

"In our White Paper, [Delivering Vital Change] the Government explained that the registration service is ideally placed to act as a focal point for information about services associated with births, deaths and marriages, such as ........ marriage preparation ...... I believe that there is a genuine opportunity for local authorities to develop those services innovatively to meet the needs of their communities, now and in future. A wider role for the registration service will improve on the current piecemeal approach by local authorities and will be underpinned by the proposed national standards."

The Family Law Act was over ten years ago. ‘Delivering Vital Change’ was five years ago. The proposals “to develop …. services innovatively to meet the needs of their communities” - which were contained in a Regulatory Reform Order, not a Bill - eventually failed to come into effect. Have they now been dropped completely? It seems likely. Governments have no stomach for ‘delivering vital change’ in this field, even though they use words to indicate that is their intention.

My conclusion is the principle of guidance for marriage preparation needs to be in the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill and not left to future Secretaries of State to determine. There is another reason for this: how can a Registrar distinguish between a couple entering an arranged marriage from a forced one, unless the couple have undertaken a valid assessment with a suitable facilitator who is willing to sign a certificate that he/she believes the couple have completed the programme in good faith? If the authors of the Bill are really intent upon trying to prevent forced marriages – and not just provide remedies - they should be willing to accept my proposed amendments and Peers and MPs should support it. The Government is perfectly willing to adopt evaluation methods proved to work in other countries. They should follow the example of the Healthy Marriage Initiative in the US.

Social Capital Index - the case for a clause in the Statistics and Registration Service Bill

2007-04-27T16:52:00.000+01:00

Social Capital is an unstoppable concept. David Cameron is instinctively in tune with electors in understanding that the highest aspirations of most people are for good relationships with family, friends, and neighbours; and if those aspirations are fulfilled - not merely they, but – the wider society benefits. Such people contribute – in many cases voluntarily and enjoyably – to a wide spectrum of good causes. It is in the interest of the State to foster the development of such social capital, and to do so without constantly trying to engineer outcomes.

Social capital is about networks. It is about connections between family members, friends, neighbours and community groups and institutions.

'Investing in each other and the community: the role of social capital', by Paul Haezewindt [Published in web format: 5 September 2006] from Social Trends, vol 33, pp 19-27. ISSN: 0306-7742 includes:

"Marital status and household type shows a significant relationship with a number of indicators of social capital. Married couples exhibited the highest levels of social capital. They were more likely to be trusting of their neighbours and enjoy high levels of reciprocity with them and were also most likely to have higher levels of social support. Eighty four per cent of married people had three or more people to turn to in a crisis. Divorced or separated people had the lowest level of social support, 72 per cent had three or more people to turn to. This group were also least likely to enjoy living in their local area. Single people were less likely to be civically engaged and be less neighbourly than other groups, but they were more likely to have satisfactory friendship networks. It should be noted, however, that marital status is strongly related to age. For example, 75 per cent of single men and women are aged between 16 and 34, while 84 per cent of married people are aged 35 or above 14. High proportions of lone parent households were likely to have both satisfactory friendship and relatives networks. Non-related households, such as people in flatshares, were least likely to know, trust and speak to neighbours, and low proportions also reported having a satisfactory relatives network...............

Few social capital indicators are found to have statistically significant relationships with factors such as income or employment status..............."

David Cameron is quite right to be upholding the institution of marriage. Given the facts about marital status and social capital, it is only sensible to measure changes in social capital by neighbourhood using the indicators available - such as neighbourhood statistics and indices, local authority best value performance indicators, and NHS Healthcare Commission performance ratings – and to provide an index of social and domestic cohesion by neighbourhood.

Social Capital Index (SCI) compared with the Retail Prices Index (RPI)

2007-04-26T08:38:00.000+01:00

"The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is the most familiar general purpose domestic measure of inflation in the United Kingdom. It is available continuously from June 1947. The Government uses it for uprating of pensions, benefits and index-linked gilts. It is commonly used in private contracts for uprating of maintenance payments and housing rents. It is also used for wage bargaining."

"The [Consumer Price Index] CPI is the main UK measure of inflation for macroeconomic purposes and forms the basis for the Government's inflation target. It is also used for international comparisons. The RPI is the most familiar domestic measure of inflation in the UK; its uses include indexation of pensions, state benefits and index-linked gilts. CPI and RPI both measure the average changes month-to-month in prices of consumer goods and services purchased in the UK, although there are differences in coverage and methodology.

The CPI contains price indices, percentage changes and weights for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), Retail Prices Index (RPI) and the components that make up these indices. Internationally, the CPI is known as the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), although the two indices remain one and the same."

There is no index of 'social capital' in the UK, but worldwide the literature on the subject is growing fast as people are becoming more aware of its significance.

The ONS provides 'Measurement of social capital in the UK 2005'. This paper presents the context for social capital measurement in the UK, the approach taken and international measurement issues. Author: Penny Babb.

"The rise in popularity of ‘social capital’ as a social concept in the late 1990s coincided with a new interest in evidence-based policy in the UK – drawing on social research to inform the nature, implementation and evaluation of policies. There was also a desire in Government to address social inequalities and social exclusion – looking for ways to reduce the gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged, and meet the needs of the excluded members of UK society. This focus resulted in the development of community policies, to regenerate neighbourhoods and promote cohesive communities. The principal aim of the community policy is to:

'develop strong and active communities in which people of all races and backgrounds are valued and participate on equal terms…'

The OECD definition of social capital presented in The Well-Being of Nations describes it as:

'networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate cooperation within or among groups'

This embodies both networks and norms and so was adopted in the UK to form the basis of our data collection and analysis.

To measure social capital, we first needed to identify the key dimensions that underpin it. Five main aspects form the basis of the UK work:

civic participation – the propensity to vote, to take action on local or national issues
social networks and support – such as contact with friends and relatives
social participation – involvement in groups and voluntary activities
reciprocity and trust – which include giving and receiving favours, as well as trusting other people and institutions such as the government and the police
views about the area – although not strictly a measure of social capital, it is required for the analysis and interpretation of the social capital measures, and includes satisfaction with living in the area, problems in the area."

The ONS seems to be going down a route that requires the completion of questionnaires even though 'proxy' measures could be used. For example from the list above:

'problems in the area' could be represented by social statistics that are already available, such as truancy, ASBOs, etc..
'Social networks and support' and 'reciprocity and trust' could be represented by marital status, domestic violence figures, household size etc., data that is already available.

The RPI and SCI have in common a basket of components that are weighted. The added dimension of the SCI is that it applies to each neighbourhood, like the ONS Neighbourhood Statistics and indices. As a tool for decision makers the SCI could prove very useful to local people - community and faith leaders, parish councillors, school governors, GPs, health visitors etc.. The question is, "When will politicians recognise that these local leaders are much more likely to be able to address the problems in their area than occupants of the Westminster village?"

Social Capital Index - Statistics and Registration Service Bill

2007-04-25T09:20:00.000+01:00

In the debate on the Statistics and Registration Service Bill in the House of Lords yesterday the issue of social and domestic cohesion was raised:

Baroness Noakes: There is also the question of developing new statistics. For example, the social capital project has been drawn to our attention. Statistics which monitor social and domestic cohesion are much sought after by those active in this field — by which I mean active in helping to cure society’s ills with practical projects on the ground rather than developing policies. A lot of statistics and data are available, but they omit some important information on marriage breakdown and family status at a local level. Many groups think that this is particularly important, and the information has not yet been pulled together in the form of a social capital index, as has been suggested to us. I do not know why that has not been done, and I hope that the Minister can tell us why we have no social capital index or equivalent measure available at local level.

The board should have the needs of users at the heart of its work, and there should be full engagement with them.

This is splendid news!

Needless to say, however, the Minister declined to oblige Baroness Noakes with an answer to her question, "I hope that the Minister can tell us why we have no social capital index or equivalent measure available at local level."

So she tried again!

Baroness Noakes: Perhaps the Minister could answer my specific questions about a social capital index. I asked what was happening with the project on that and why we do not have a social capital index.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: I hope that I can. That was one of the things that I said that we would take away and think about. The information that I have is that the ONS carries out work on social capital, and has done since 2001. The board’s powers, including, at Clause 18, that to produce statistics, would enable it to produce additional work on social capital if necessary. I am told by officials that we will write to the noble Baroness to explain more and to answer any specific points that she has.

Baroness Noakes: I am grateful that the Minister will write because people who we have been in touch with me are particularly concerned about that. I see that those in the Box are smiling. They will do the letter for the Minister; it is not a problem.

The Minister’s response was entirely predictable. Anything that these Benches suggest to improve the Bill and to keep the needs of persons such as users properly in view are regarded not as an improvement but as an unnecessary elaboration, or possibly even unhelpful. I will consider carefully what the Minister said. I look forward to the letter that his officials will draft for him on social capital and I will decide at that stage whether or not I shall return to this issue on Report.

Feisty lady!

Social capital - more children in care, despite 'early intervention'

2007-04-24T18:35:00.001+01:00

Children in care: Telford numbers rise despite use of early intervention by Sarah Cooper, 25 April 2007 [Children Now]

"Telford & Wrekin Council has seen a rise in the number of looked-after children on its books despite using early intervention.

The figures go against Government thinking spelled out in Every Child Matters that early intervention schemes would reduce the numbers of children in care. But professionals believe this does not mean the system is not working and instead say it is proving more efficient at helping families in need......."

"But Ian Johnston, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, said he is not surprised the numbers of children in care have increased. "Government policy is too simplistic and one of the problems with political parties is they look for the quick fixes." [my italics]

"The rise in numbers was revealed at last week's Looked-After Children: Early intervention and specialist services conference run by Priory Education Services. Barbara Evans, head of safeguarding and corporate parenting at the council, said there were 198 looked-after children at the year ending 31 March 2006, while at 31 March 2007 there were 231."

The problem with evidence like this is that to be properly understood it needs to be put into context and studied over a suitable period of time, probably several years.

All the more reason, it seems to me, to keep pressing for a Social Capital Index of which the increase or decrease in children taken into care should be one component.

Social capital - 'social responsibility'

2007-04-24T08:41:00.000+01:00

Today the House of Lords considers amendments in Committee to the Statistics and Registration Service Bill [see earlier posts]. It provides an opportunity to insert an amendment for a Social Capital Index, as there is a clause [19] already in the Bill for the RPI [Retail Price Index].

Writing in the Guardian [23rd April 2007] David Cameron says:

“Government can encourage social responsibility by building and strengthening the institutions of a responsible society. Supporting families - because a stable home life is the best way to ensure children grow up as responsible citizens. Transferring power to local and neighbourhood institutions (and finding ways to promote people's engagement in them) - because that will make people behave more responsibly. And we have to trust people more: whether that's professionals in public services or people who want to volunteer in their community.”

He must be right about this. David Cameron is talking about how we build social capital. Unfortunately he is not yet addressing the issue of how we measure social capital and changes in it by neighbourhood. One day he will have to do this if he wants to establish his credentials as a politician who is really concerned about marriage and family life. Fine words butter no parsnips. They prompt the question, "Why are the Conservatives so coy about tabling an amendment for a Social Capital Index?" Ultimately, people measure what they value.

Fortunately there is a groundswell of recognition of the need for measuring changes in social capital. An excellent web site for information about social capital measurement is published by Paul Bullen, an Australian.

He provides a link to Indicators of Social and Family Functioning by R Zubrick, AA Williams, SR Silburn, (TVW Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth,Western Australia) and G Vimpani (Child and Youth Health Network, University of Newcastle) May 2000.

The Executive Summary begins:

According to a ..... OECD Forum report (January, 1997):

‘pressures on social cohesion are likely to evolve over the next two decades as unemployment, earnings inequality, demographic shifts, technological progress, open trade, and greater competition in less constrained market places, continue to contribute to economic and social turbulence.’

"Australia is no less immune to these pressures, with a perceived decline in social cohesion which has placed stress on family and social functioning. Rapid economic and social change can manifest as serious problems in the developmental health and well-being of children, young people and their families. These problems include child abuse, early school failure, truancy, depression and suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, juvenile offending, violence, relationship and family breakdown."

It supports my contention that we need a Social Capital Index as much as the RPI in the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and that a major element of this SCI should be the factors relating to social and domestic cohesion.

The components [problems] listed above are very similar to those which I have proposed for the index, which is reassuring.

PSHE and Social Capital - absence of a moral code in the home puts some children under additional pressures

2007-04-15T07:36:00.001+01:00

The following are extracts from the Ofsted report 'Time for change? Personal, social and health education' [Published: April 2007 Reference no: 070049]:

"At times, it is the school rather than the home that provides the moral code and, in its absence in the home, some children are put under additional pressures."

"Parents greatest challenge is to set clear expectations, and to be aware of and to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour. Some parents do not rise to this challenge."

"the ability to make moral judgements about what to do in actual situations and the potential to put these judgements into practice"

"Most of the schools in this survey ensure that their aims and values are well known to pupils and their parents, and that they are adhered to consistently. They will often refer to personal morality, the effects of actions and choices, and the nature of relationships concepts very relevant to SRE. However, some of the schools visited need to broaden their coverage of SRE and clarify what they mean by achievement in this area, so that it includes developing pupils' values and attitudes....."

"focusing on a pupil's individual needs and avoiding a one size fits all approach......... trying to bring together the work of mentors, counsellors and external support agencies with individual pupils and, if appropriate, with their families"

Consistent adherence to the aims and values of the school, including a moral code, is a worthy outcome arising from good teaching of PSHE. But pupils must find the mixed messages they are hearing very confusing:

(1) On the one hand government ministers repeat the New Labour mantra "we shall not promote one type of family structure as opposed to another".

(2) On the other, schools are trying to promote "personal morality, the effects of actions and choices, and the nature of relationships concepts very relevant to SRE......." and are concerned with "developing pupils' values and attitudes....."

In fact 'family structure' is a garbled concept in 'government speak' as teenage motherhood is deprecated and the government even produces league tables showing which local authorities are best at reducing teenage pregnancy. To pretend its attitude to family structure is a neutral one is belied by its own policies.

What is baffling is why - if this sort of league table is a valid concept in improving this aspect in particular of social and domestic cohesion - there are not comprehensive neighbourhood statistics and a league table comprising an index of other aspects of social and domestic cohesion together with a social capital index?

One minister [Maria Neagle] who said "we shall not promote one type of family structure as opposed to another" went on to say, "We must deal with people and families as we find them, and we must try to ensure that whatever structure children are brought up in, they have the best possible chance in life. In 97 per cent. of cohabiting couples, the father registers the birth of the child with the mother. We should not be prescriptive about precisely what the best structure is."

This is disingenuous, as the break-up rate of couples who are unmarried at the time of the birth of their child is far greater and faster than that of couples who are married at the time of the birth.

"We should not be prescriptive about precisely what the best structure is" looks and sounds like an argument that the government is not concerned with the facts, is unwilling to study the research on family structure, and will suppress - whenever it can - the publication of statistics that are relevant.

Faced with such humbug, what chance have schools got in promoting a moral code when the government is effectively opposed to the very idea and is actively promoting 'diversity' at every opportunity ?

PSHE and Social Capital - Ofsted says "schools are beginning to realise the inadequacy of much of their assessment"

2007-04-14T06:47:00.000+01:00

Time for change? Personal, social and health education

Age group: 11-16
Published: April 2007
Reference no: 070049

This document may be reproduced in whole or in part for non-commercial educational purposes, provided that the information quoted is reproduced without adaptation and the source and date of publication are stated.

Alexandra House
33 Kingsway
London WC2B 6SE
No. 070049
www.ofsted.gov.uk
T 08456 404040 Published
April 2007 © Crown Copyright 2007

Extracts from the report [my italics]:

It is important that sufficient time is allocated to PSHE and that good use is made of it. Too many schools do not base their PSHE curriculum sufficiently on the pupils' assessed needs. The area recruits few teachers with directly relevant qualifications to teach PSHE. Three quarters of secondary schools have developed specialist teams of teachers to teach it successfully. However, PSHE is taught by non-specialists in some schools and too much of this teaching is unsatisfactory. Assessment continues to be the weakest aspect of teaching.

Many schools focus narrowly on assessing pupils knowledge rather than determining the impact of their PSHE provision on improving pupils attitudes and skills...........

Schools have, therefore, become aware of the need to improve assessment and have drawn on advice from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Even so, many schools do not know about this advice and have not yet taken steps to improve assessment..........

The revised standards for the National Healthy Schools Programme (NHSP) have raised senior leadership teams awareness of the importance of strong PSHE provision. The standards require participating schools, through a whole-school approach, to tackle the four themes of the programme:

healthy eating,
physical activity,
emotional health and
well-being

that lead to 'healthy school' status.......

Leadership and management of PSHE are good in nine in ten schools, although monitoring and evaluation remain the weakest aspects.........

Schools should:

• involve pupils in:

− considering how the PSHE curriculum might meet their needs best
− determining what the outcomes should be and how these should be achieved
− improve the assessment of pupils' progress in PSHE by evaluating changes in attitudes and the extent to which pupils are developing relevant skills

• report annually to the governing body on the monitoring and evaluation of PSHE

• improve the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of PSHE provision

• ensure that work at Key Stage 3 takes sufficient account of pupils' learning at Key Stage 2

• develop constructive links with a range of support services through drop-in centres or extended school provision, in order to respond appropriately to the personal needs of pupils and their families..........

At times, it is the school rather than the home that provides the moral code and, in its absence in the home, some children are put under additional pressures. In nearly all schools, the PSHE programme is the vehicle for tackling many of these pressures.............

23. Parents greatest challenge is to set clear expectations, and to be aware of and to accept responsibility for their children's behaviour. Some parents do not rise to this challenge. Pupils look to schools for help hence the importance of high quality PSHE.

27. If pupils are to be able to analyse, reflect on, discuss and argue constructively about issues in PSHE, they need to develop appropriate skills. In good provision, pupils showed:

• communication skills, such as putting forward a point of view and listening to others

• decision-making, so that they could make sensible choices based on relevant information

• the ability to make moral judgements about what to do in actual situations and the potential to put these judgements into practice

• interpersonal skills, so that they could manage relationships confidently and effectively

• assertiveness skills

• the ability to act responsibly as an individual and as a member of various groups.

40. Assessment continues to be the weakest aspect of PSHE teaching. It is sufficiently rigorous in only a minority of schools and unsatisfactory in half. One of the reasons for the lack of even simple assessment strategies is schools belief that pupils enjoyment of the subject is due, in part, to the absence of any assessment framework. This is misguided: teachers need to know if pupils have acquired the knowledge, understanding and skills they intended them to learn. In turn, this should influence planning to ensure that pupils continue to make progress.

41. Most schools focus narrowly only on pupils' progress in developing their subject knowledge and understanding. Relatively few schools attempt to assess changes in pupils' attitudes or their developing skills. Few schools have valid data which might be used to inform planning and, where the data are available, they are not used.

42. Good practice in assessing pupils. current knowledge includes using evidence from evaluations of teaching, assessment data, the outcomes of discussions with pupils, and behavioural surveys.

To improve assessment, schools should:

• make good use of the QCA's new assessment guidance and end of Key Stage statements for PSHE

• determine pupils' current knowledge and understanding before a new topic is taught

• plan assessment as a key element of teaching and learning

• involve pupils in assessing their own progress

• gather evidence on pupils' knowledge, understanding and skills

• challenge pupils' attitudes and raise their awareness of how their actions have an impact on themselves and others.

43. With its focus on pupils' outcomes, the new school inspection framework strengthens the role of PSHE. However, in trying to identify and evaluate outcomes, schools are beginning to realise the inadequacy of much of their assessment. New advice from the QCA is starting to have an impact, although not all schools are aware of it........

48. Planning for SRE also requires an understanding of young peoples' needs. Knowing about aspects of SRE does not, on its own, ensure a young persons personal safety and sexual health. Effective SRE should help pupils to develop the personal skills they will need if they are to establish and maintain relationships and make informed choices and decisions about their health and well-being.

49. An SRE programme is likely to be particularly effective if it enables pupils to:

• communicate a point of view clearly and appropriately, and listen to the views of others

• make sensible choices about what to do in particular situations

• manage relationships with friends confidently and effectively

• act responsibly as an individual and as a member of a group...........

51. Most of the schools in this survey ensure that their aims and values are well known to pupils and their parents, and that they are adhered to consistently. They will often refer to personal morality, the effects of actions and choices, and the nature of relationships concepts very relevant to SRE. However, some of the schools visited need to broaden their coverage of SRE and clarify what they mean by ahievement in this area, so that it includes developing pupils' values and attitudes............

55. Smooth transition is also hindered by inadequate assessment. In particular, work at Key Stage 3 takes insufficient account of pupils' prior learning and experiences at Key Stage 2. This mismatch is all the more stark because of recent changes to PSHE programmes in Key Stage 2.

56. Most PSHE lessons, through the inclusion of discussion and group work, give pupils opportunities to ask questions to clarify their understanding. However, such lessons cannot easily enable pupils to ask for more personal advice that they would not wish to discuss in front of their peers. Although most schools regard the class teacher/form tutor as the key adult to support individual pupils, some pupils find that they have better relationships with a subject teacher. Discussions with pupils during the inspections indicated that they would be reluctant to discuss some personal issues with any member of the teaching staff. This reluctance arises from their concerns about confidentiality and whether the teacher is able to advise them on more sensitive issues, such as sex and relationships.

57. To go some way towards resolving these concerns, successful schools have adopted approaches to support individual pupils which include:

• building pupils' confidence

• always taking seriously all issues raised by pupils

• handling information professionally and confidentially

• ensuring effective liaison with integrated support services

• focusing on a pupil's individual needs and avoiding a one size fits all approach

• trying to bring together the work of mentors, counsellors and external support agencies with individual pupils and, if appropriate, with their families

• not being afraid to admit failure with some pupils; there will be some whose complex needs cannot be met within a school.

63. Schools are required, through a whole-school approach, to deal with the four obligatory themes that make up the 'healthy school' status, to provide evidence against all criteria for each theme and to demonstrate outcomes that have made an impact on pupils' learning experiences and/or behaviour. The four themes are:

• PSHE (including sex and relationship education and drug education)

• healthy eating

• physical activity

• emotional health and well-being (including bullying).

64. With these developments in mind and the concerns about the time currently allocated to this aspect of the curriculum, the on-going QCA review of the curriculum is timely and will address the curricular content and how PSHE outcomes might be achieved. Many schools are already considering how PSHE might support the five outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda. Schools already recognise the importance of their PSHE programmes in either coordinating the contributions of different subjects or taking sole responsibility for dealing with the Every Child Matters agenda.

65. Care should be taken to ensure that the PSHE curriculum meets the needs of young people. Not all schools or national bodies establish effective ways to gather the views of pupils. Focus groups or school councils might help to shape wider discussions, although they should not be seen, necessarily, as representing the wider school population. The involvement of PSHE advisers and their local authorities would help to broaden consultation and secure access to the views of more young people, in that way helping to ensure that a future PSHE curriculum meets their needs successfully.

End of extracts.

This is a very useful report for all those interested in PSHE. I am pleased that talk2me addresses the issues raised by the report about weaknesses in the current practises of many schools, particularly "in trying to identify and evaluate outcomes, schools are beginning to realise the inadequacy of much of their assessment."

Future posts will explore specific aspects of the report.

Child Poverty - "Aiming high", but mixed messages from HMG

2007-03-31T09:45:00.000+01:00

Aiming high for children: supporting families [March 2007] is in many ways an admirable document, but it fails to address the issue of competing messages from popular culture, probably because HMG itself is guilty of promoting the most crucially damaging messages that now form part of the UK's popular culture.

2.61 Parents who want to teach their children right from wrong and standards of behaviour and how to exercise discipline and self control, can find themselves competing with popular culture which often seems to be sending out competing messages and which then reinforces all the peer pressure on their own children.

"Nothing wrong with that", is how most people will react.

And few will complain about:

2.54 Children’s outcomes are best when they grow up in a stable family structures with a positive relationship between parents. The quality of each parent’s relationship with the other is vital. Government wants to support stable relationships between parents. However, where relationships break down, the Government also wants to provide the necessary support to ensure children get the best start.

2.55 There is a high correlation between family breakdown and poor child outcomes. However, parental separation is not an isolated event, but a process that starts long before the actual separation and can continue to impact after the parents have parted. The evidence shows that parental conflict can also be very damaging to children’s outcomes, and that support offered to parents can be effective to help minimise such conflict.

But if HMG really wants to "provide the necessary support to ensure children get the best start" why is its new mantra 'prevention and early intervention' limited to children and not applied to the relationships of couples before they become parents, by promoting marriage preparation? It's Ok to teach children moral values, but perish the thought parents should be asked to consider them! This is typical of the mixed messages that HMG is sending out. No wonder children and young people are confused!

1.8 .......... • prevention: Preventing poor outcomes from arising in the first place benefits children, young people and families directly. In addition, failure to prevent problems impacts not only on the family but also society more widely, for example in lost economic contributions, poor health, and the effects of antisocial behaviour.

"Government wants to support stable relationships between parents". Really? So what has it done about it? It's just cut the MARS [Marriage and Relationship Support] grants - which in any case were miniscule - so the 'message' it is sending out is that it does not value marriage and stable couple relationships. The Weekly Update of UK Marriage News - No 7.11 18/3/07 from 2-in-2-1 puts it like this:

CYPF Grant analysis: We have now had a closer look at the list of funded organisations for this year’s CYPF grant and can confirm that none of the grants made this year is for work that can be categorised as “MARS”. This means that the funding is simply that announced last year – ie some £369K LESS than in 2005/6. The main loser is once again Relate which has seen its core funding cut from £2.1M two years ago to £1.2M this year with a further reduction of £200K already announced for next year. The total MARS funding is now down to £3.63M from the £5M three years ago – a 33% reduction in real terms, with a further 9% cut forecast for next year. We leave you to draw your own conclusions on where the whole area of Family Breakdown really sits on this current government’s agenda.

And HMG complains about "competing messages from popular culture"!

So much for its assertion that "the quality of each parent’s relationship with the other is vital."

Aiming high for children: supporting families claims it is 'building resilience':

1.13 The Government has sought to work with parents and communities to reduce key risks or negative influences on children’s lives, through the priority attached to eradicating child poverty.....

Who will be inclined to believe HMG is 'building resilience' - or seriously concerned with 'child poverty' - when it can't even mention 'marriage' in a document about supporting families, and is consistently reducing such small grants as it makes for marriage support?

Child poverty - socialists on the back foot

2007-03-30T14:04:00.000+01:00

The Guardian has reacted quickly to the news that 'child poverty' is actually getting worse now under New Labour.

"You can't talk about children's well-being unless you dare talk about the inequality of their life experience" [whatever that means], wails Polly Toynbee.

"Here is even worse news: inequality grew again and is now back up to the level when figures were first collated (the Gini coefficient) back in 1961. This looks grim; here was one solid rock on which Labour could stake its moral claims. That astonishing promise to abolish all child poverty by 2020 was Labour's trump card when it faces the sullen looks of its shrunken remaining troops. Whatever Cameron may pretend is his "aspiration" to keep lifting children out of poverty, if his plans don't add up he has been let off the hook for now....."

"Sure Start children's centres are the best hope of reaching every family to give every child a chance - but the 3,500 new centres are being rolled out without anything like the funds needed for intensive professional help. Everywhere, brilliant pilots and small schemes show what can be done: an opportunity tax should supply the funds to make them universal. None of that will happen unless voters will it. The child poverty target can't be hit by stealth."

All the more reason for the ONS to publish a Social Capital Index by neighbourhood so we can see what effect Sure Start's "brilliant pilots and small schemes" - and the programmes provided by other organisations - are having on social and domestic cohesion, as well as the effect they are having on the other indicators of deprivation.

But there is not a squeak so far from the Guardian about the need for a Social Capital Index so that the evaluations can be undertaken.

"Until now, the very word "inequality" has been banned from the political lexicon. But now the wealth gap is widening, Labour has to confront it. In the last decade every £100 increase in GDP growth has seen £40 go to the richest 10% of the people: the other 90% have had to share out the rest - and this pattern is accelerating. This argument hasn't yet been put, these facts are not out there in the political battleground, but here is prime territory for Labour to lay down a challenge" Polly Toynbee declares roundly.

Actually, the taboo is not "inequality" but "marriage", as most socialists can't seem to utter the word without choking on it.

"Sure Start children's centres are the best hope of reaching every family to give every child a chance" claims Polly Toynbee, as if it is an assertion that should go unchallenged. But surely "the best hope of reaching every family to give every child a chance" would occur if the fathers marry the childrens' mothers, love them, and remain married to them? Is that not something to be promoted?

"Gordon Brown yesterday admitted the government faced a big challenge to reach its key child poverty target but refused to pledge more money to address the problem" says Ashley Seager also in the Guardian.

"Giving testimony to parliament's Treasury select committee, the chancellor also faced accusations that last week's budget had left many poorer people worse off. The government was stung this week when its own figures showed that child poverty had increased for the first time in six years while overall poverty had risen for the first time under this government........... Figures out yesterday also showed take up of the pension credit had fallen last year."

"This is further proof that Gordon Brown's obsession with mass means-tested benefits is failing to help the most vulnerable people in our society," said Lib Dem work and pensions spokesman David Laws.

Meanwhile, in "The Politicizing of Poverty" Janice Shaw Crouse [27/3/07] is writing in the US:

"A headline about changing family structure wouldn't be effective, however, for two reasons. One, it would make reporters' eyes glaze over, and two, it does not lay the blame for increased poverty at the door of the current administration and its so-called "tax cuts for the rich." A third reason is that the problem relates to irresponsible sexual behavior. Much of the poverty problem is related to the growth of single-parent families, a fact that is recognized further down in the Brookings report in the following statement:

'Three of the most effective ways to reduce poverty are to increase work levels, reverse the growth of single-parent families, and improve educational outcomes.'

Note that even liberal social analysts must come to terms with the negative outcomes of dysfunctional sexual behavior. They try to formulate policy proposals to deal with the consequences of non-marital sex in terms compatible with their world view that sees social structures as the sources of problems and government programs as their solutions. So, they seek funding for yet another iteration of government programs rather than acknowledge the root moral-values issues, [my italics] which, to be fair, are the purview of today's religious leaders, many of whom have forsaken the true message of their calling.

We know, too, that ever-larger funding for education is not going to change the reality that children who grow up without a father present often turn a classroom into barely controlled chaos where learning is a very difficult proposition. But these realities have not yet penetrated the culture. The downward trend in the marriage rate among unmarried women age 15-44 continues. The marriage rate today is a little less than half of what it was in the mid-1960s. Also the unmarried birthrate of women 20 and older continues to rise year after year.

The charge has long been wielded that the rise in unwed birth rates was the consequence of poverty. Yet, with the advent of the abstinence movement, the rise of the unwed birthrate among American teens miraculously stopped climbing in the early 1990s after rising almost every year since WWII. The unwed teen birthrate has since declined by 25 percent. Funny, after listening to the left incessantly sing the song that youths could not control their raging hormones, yet another myth has been swept into the trash can..................

Sadly, it's not politically correct to focus on moral values and responsible sexual behavior but as the public relations folks at Brookings recognize, there is always a good market for yet another press release full of hopeful promises about governmental programs [my italics]."

Child poverty - swings and roundabouts

2007-03-28T06:15:00.000+01:00

"Budget 2007: Benefit and tax changes will lift 200,000 children out of poverty" says Tristan Donovan, 28 March 2007 at "Children Now".

In the nick of time, so it seems, as according to the BBC, Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 15:51 GMT 16:51 UK:

"More UK children live in poverty" - "Figures showing a 200,000 rise in UK children living in relative poverty last year have been described as a "moral disgrace" by Barnardo's."

It's difficult to know what and who to believe.

Let's try Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab) speaking in the House of Commons on 26th March 2007:

"I want to focus on the measures to reduce child poverty. I welcome the decisions that will lift 200,000 children out of poverty, and the recommitment to halving child poverty by 2010 and to abolishing it by 2020 ............. It is clear from the criticisms that we have heard that Her Majesty’s Opposition basically do not understand the phenomenon of child poverty, which is presumably why they allowed it to treble under the last Tory Government. It has also become clear to us that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) has completely misled his colleagues by suggesting that family breakdown is the prime cause of child poverty in this country. In January, there was a lot of talk about the UNICEF comparisons of child well-being among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, but I have looked at the more up-to-date comparisons between European countries by Jonathan Bradshaw of York university. They were published in a journal called Social Indicators Research in January this year, and they show that family breakdown is not the prime cause of child poverty in any of the European countries. Indeed, if we strip out the experience of the United Kingdom, we see that there is a positive correlation between child well-being and the number of single-parent families, with Finland and Sweden at the top of the table............... The key factors influencing child poverty were found to be income inequality, child poverty itself, obviously, gross domestic product per capita - at is, the overall wealth of a country - social spending and spending on children and families. That is why the strategy announced in the Budget for tackling child poverty is the right course of action."

So there we have it! Or do we? Is Professor Jonathan Bradshaw the last word we need to hear on the subject?

If the Labour "strategy" is so virtuously and manifestly the correct one, how is it that Barnado's are complaining about the "moral disgrace" that 200,000 more children have just slipped into poverty?

Let's hear it from another professor:

The Extraordinary Effects of Marriage [January 2002 in Accountancy] By Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics, Warwick University. Visit his website at www.oswald.co.uk

"A new branch of research is finding that marriage has powerful and beneficial effects on human beings. Currently this work is done by applied statisticians, and appears only in arcane journals. But its findings deserve to be read by everyone in western society. The work proceeds in a way common in modern social science. Large random samples of families are followed through time. They are interviewed every year about their lives, and their incomes and psychological wellbeing levels are measured.

The first finding is that marriage makes you richer. In virtually every country ever studied, workers who are married earn between 10% and 20% more than those who are single. This figure holds after many other influences are factored out (in other words, it bears in mind there are lots of other forces that affect pay, including someone’s age and education and gender and so on). Economists argue about what this finding means. Some say that it is because ‘better’ people -- healthier, more tenacious, more conscientious, better looking, more productive, stronger -- are the ones who get married. Marriage itself, on this line of argument, is not doing anything to a man or woman's earning power. Those with large pay packets simply choose to get hitched more than do those on low earnings. That sounds plausible, but actually it does not fit the facts. For one thing, if you study people in their early 20s, then those who are married barely earn more than singles. It appears that the ‘marriage wage premium’, as it is sometimes called by researchers, actually gets stronger through time as the years pass and the marriage gets longer. This suggests that marriage is more a cause than an effect of higher pay....

The second main finding from modern statistical research is even stranger. Marriage makes you live longer. Although most members of the general public are probably not aware of it, there is now some consensus among epidemiologists that you can prolong your life by marrying. Marriage keeps you alive about 3 extra years, on average. Numerous studies have shown this. One of the most intriguing followed male graduates of Amherst College in the United States in the late nineteenth century. At age 18, all these men had their health, height and weight measured. Their later occupation was also recorded, and much else about them. Then they were followed through their lives. All are now dead, of course. Strikingly, those who married lived much longer, even bearing in mind other influences.

There is plenty of British evidence too. In the late 1960s, 20,000 middle – aged male civil servants had a medical examination and were then tracked for the next two decades. At the end of that time, 14 out of every 1000 married men had died, compared to 21 for widowers, 17 for those single, and 21 for those separated. This study is interesting because it appears to pin some of the blame, if that is the right word, on cardiovascular disease. Unmarried men had much higher blood pressure. The current conventional view in the epidemiological journals is that marriage works through some kind of protective effect on mental wellbeing. It lowers stress and worry – presumably because sharing worries halves them, just as tradition says. Partly, too, married people smoke less and eat in a healthier way."

So you can take your choice, if you want to reduce deprivation and end child poverty:

(1) Trust Helen Goodman and Gordon Brown to continue to tinker creatively with taxes and benefits, or

(2) Ask Iain Duncan Smith whether he is going to try to persuade his Conservative colleagues to support the amendments I am proposing to the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill.

Contraception and Abortion (Parental Information) - Wednesday, 14 March 2007

2007-03-16T17:40:00.000Z

Angela Wilkinson MP sought:

"That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require practitioners providing contraception or abortion services to a child under the age of 16 to inform his or her parent or guardian; and for connected purposes."

The Noes won by 169 to 87 (majority 82) with 4 tellers, making a turnout of 260.

Opposing the motion Evan Harris MP said:

"The answer, however, is not more ignorance, which is what the hon. Member for Upminster has prescribed: it is more information. "

Actually, it is Dr Harris who is on the side of ignorance - but for parents and guardians - with the medical profession left cheerfully providing contraceptive services and abortions to those under the legal age of consent without let or hindrance.

It is difficult to imagine a recipe more likely to give encouragement to young boys and male adults who wish to coerce underage girls into having sex with them.

"There's no harm in it. You won't get pregnant. Your parents need never know."

The facts are different. As Mrs Wilkinson said:

"The provision of lots of sex information has not worked, so sex information should be replaced with sex education. In education about the real risks involved and the likely outcomes, the advice to under-age girls should be to abstain, to wait, to delay, and to resist, rather than to use contraception and believe that they will not come to any harm. Parents need to be part of that process."

She also said:

"Advice on abortion may be provided and accepted without the parents' knowledge. Just a few weeks ago, I received a letter from a constituent who had been required to leave his place of work, find a chemist and buy a tube of antiseptic cream, go to his son's primary school where the child had grazed his knee, apply the cream and then return to work. Apparently that procedure was too risky to be undertaken without parental involvement. We live in a contrary world that rates the application of cream to a grazed knee, or a visit to the dentist, for which parental consent is also required, as a greater risk than an abortion on a minor."

It is a pity that Mrs Wilkinson won't get a chance to bring in her Bill.

However, for those who are wanting to bring about improvements in social and domestic cohesion in the broadest sense, there are realistic opportunities to insert significant amendments in the:

Statistics and Registration Services Bill

and the

Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill.

Please see earlier posts.

"Blair U-turn over forced marriages" - The Observer 4th March 2007

2007-03-04T06:25:00.000Z

Some excellent news in The Observer:

"Tony Blair is to back moves to make forced marriages illegal. The move, a U-turn in government policy, will ensure the introduction of a new law [Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill] enshrining powerful rights for victims, many of them under age, who have been compelled to marry against their will.

The Prime Minister's change of heart, revealed in an exclusive interview with The Observer, means that legislation introduced in the Lords by the Liberal Democratic peer, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, will obtain the government backing it has previously been denied."

'We listened to what people were saying,' Blair said. 'I was told we were in the wrong place on this, that the bill should be supported and that we should think again. I reflected and realised that, if you approach the problem through civil law, it's very sensible. It [forced marriage] is a terrible thing.'

Very rarely do Governments support Bills by private Members of Parliament. Even more rarely do they back down from a position of opposition. So, 'two cheers' for the Prime Minister for this - thus far.

There is more joy in heaven etc....

The next question is will HMG back the amendment that I am proposing should be added to Lord Lester's Bill?

I am suggesting two additional clauses should be added to section 2 of the draft Bill concerning 'guidance', which starts with 2 (a) the difference between arranged and forced marriage:

(e) the opportunities and advantages for the parties to protect themselves and each other against any possible accusations about the marriage being one that is forced or bogus by participating together in a research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an independently validated psychometric inventory - to assist them in confirming to the Registrar or deputy Registrar the voluntary nature of their commitment to the marriage.

(f) the advantage of obtaining a certificate from the facilitator of the programme of marriage preparation that they have satisfactorily completed both the educational programme and the inventory.

And the question after that is will HMG support the amendment that I am proposing should be added to the Statistics and Registration Service Bill?

The opportunity arises with the Statistics and Registration Service Bill to insert a clause for publishing a Social Capital Index. There is already a clause [19] to provide for the Retail Price Index. My proposal is:

[20] Social capital index
(1) The Board must under section 18
(a) compile and maintain a social capital index by neighbourhood, and
(b) publish it regularly, together with
(c) statistics and an index for social and domestic cohesion.

The amended Bills would have the effect of:

(1 ) enabling local authorities which decide to follow the guidance to train registration officers to introduce marrying couples to the benefits to them of undertaking an approved programme of marriage preparation, and
(2) measure the changes by neighbourhood in social and domestic cohesion as a result of the LA's policy and the marriage education programmes local voluntary groups are providing.

The US government has sponsored a Healthy Marriage Initiative and included a list of approved assessment tools. Two of these psychometric inventories - FOCCUS [which I and Marriage Care and Scottish Marriage Care provide] and PREPARE are widely available in the UK.

Please see Criteria for Inclusion of Relationship Assessment Tools on the National Healthy Marriage Web site.

"The best chance to grow" by Terry Prendergast in The Tablet

2007-03-03T08:28:00.000Z

Would that more journals concerned with religious and moral issues could attract writers like Terry Prendergast [The Tablet 3rd March 2007] to dig a bit deeper than most of our politicians on the subject of marriage:

"But take a closer look at the politicians' chief concerns about marriage or the lack of it. When National Marriage Week was launched last month at the House of Commons, the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith spoke about his recent report, Breakdown Britain, which highlighted that the cost of family breakdown appears to have risen by about £7 billion in a 10-year period. However, what was most striking about his comments was that he stressed the importance of marriage for the stability of society, never once mentioning the importance for the couple themselves, their health or their well-being.

This is a typical approach for a politician, as government, and would-be governing parties, tend to be concerned more with social stability than with personal and emotional health. And that reflects a clear failure to understand that the former depend on the latter. "

What to do then?

Well, I have suggested in an earlier post that people can write to their MPs [it's easily done, see this page on the right] and to the Odysseus Trust to ask them to support an amendment to Lord Lester's Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill. This would include in the 'guidance' for all couples getting married information about the benefits of undertaking a research-based programme of marriage preparation, including a pre-marital inventory.

There is also an opportunity with the Statistics and Registration Service Bill to insert a clause for publishing a Social Capital Index. There is already a clause [19] to provide for the Retail Price Index. My proposal is:

[20] Social capital index
(1) The Board must under section 18
(a) compile and maintain a social capital index by neighbourhood, and
(b) publish it every year, together with
(c) statistics relating to social and domestic cohesion.

Again, it is a simple matter to write to your MP about it.

There is a further reason for taking action now:

The Statistics and Registration Service Bill "will also establish proper employment status and rights for registration officers (as local authority employees) in England and Wales." Whereas in the past registration officers - not being employees of local authorities - could not be required by local authorities to promote marriage education programmes, it will soon be much easier for a local authority to do this, if it has thought through and published a coherent policy for social and domestic cohesion for its area.

In an earlier debate [4th November 2002] Ruth Kelly said:

In our White Paper, [Delivering Vital Change] the Government explained that the registration service is ideally placed to act as a focal point for information about services associated with births, deaths and marriages, such as ........ marriage preparation...... I believe that there is a genuine opportunity for local authorities to develop those services innovatively to meet the needs of their communities, now and in future. A wider role for the registration service will improve on the current piecemeal approach by local authorities and will be underpinned by the proposed national standards.

Sadly, the proposals - which were contained in a Regulatory Reform Order, not a Bill - eventually failed to come into effect. The conclusion was:

"The Committee reports that the proposal for the Regulatory Reform (Registration of Births and Deaths)(England and Wales) Order 2004 is not an appropriate subject for a regulatory reform order. The proposed order should not be proceeded with."

Fortunately, the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill together - if passed with the amendments I am proposing - could start to transform the culture in favour of marriage.

But I suspect our parliamentarians will need much 'encouragement'!

Tony Blair disputes "general social breakdown"

2007-02-27T21:57:00.000Z

"Marriage policies 'not the cure' " screams the BBC, affronted that anyone could possibly dare to challenge its attempts to bury any discussion of 'marriage'.

Poodle-like it presents the debate which has at long last started - thanks to David Cameron - from the perspective of the Prime Minister. But let's give credit to Andrew Selous MP who first demanded there should be a debate in November 2003.

At his monthly press conference Tony Blair said, when it came to the most dysfunctional families who were "shut out" of mainstream society, specific intervention was needed at an early stage.

"In my view, the debate is not about marriage versus lone parents. The debate is about how you target measures specifically on those families some of whom will be lone parents - but some of whom will be couples."

As usual Tony Blair talks about how to 'target measures specifically on .... [dysfunctional] families some of whom will be lone parents - but some of whom will be couples', rather than promoting universal marriage and relationship education. The former is not only patently what is not required, and the latter is also what the wiser members of Parliament - across the political parties - have been saying for twelve years or so. Which policy is more likely to stigmatise lone parents?

If Tony Blair is right - and there is no 'general social breakdown' - how is it that West Yorkshire police are having to deal with 35,000 reported incidents of domestic violence each year? Why is it that one in five pregnancies are aborted? Who says that the 42% of children born to parents who are unmarried would not prefer their relationship to be an enduring one? Why is the UK in bottom place in just about every league table that might be used to measure 'social capital' in western democracies? And - possibly most telling of all - why have the Downing Street website gurus erased all references to its social capital project?

The Conservatives control the Local Government Association. So why aren't Conservative LA's promoting marriage education programmes through Register Offices in which they have paid staff? And why isn't David Cameron and the LGA demanding that a full range of indices and neighbourhood statistics are published so that local changes in social capital can be properly measured?

I'm sorry there is still such a long way to go. But at least and at last the debate has begun.

"A Culture of Child Abuse" by The Revd David Keen

2007-02-15T18:13:00.000Z

The Revd David Keen starts his blog [14/2/07] :

"The UNICEF report on childhood in Britain, putting us bottom of 21 nations in terms of children's well being (a composite of poverty, health, safety, education, family, risk behaviour and happiness), is grim reading."

Splendidly he concludes:

"Finally, (really finally), if anyone knows some good marriage preparation/parenting course material, please send in a comment. One of the best practical responses we can make as a local church is to provide decent marriage prep and parenting support. "

Would that several thousand more Ministers decide to issue the same invitation!

Let's hope the UNICEF report also prompts some responses to the poll at this blog. Surely we should be trying to measure our progress - or lack of it - in this vital area, not just nationally but by school and neighbourhood?

But measuring changes in social and domestic cohesion is not on the political agenda in the UK. I followed a link from:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/socialcapital/project.asp

to:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/su/social%20capital/socialcapital.pdf

and got:

"We are sorry. The page you are looking for cannot be found. It might have been removed, had its name changed, or may be temporarily unavailable.

Click on this link to return to the http://www2.blogger.com/www.number-10.gov.uk home page.

If you followed a link from this site to get here, please contact the Number 10 Webteam: webmaster@pmo.gov.uk "

I followed the instructions [2/2/07] , copied the ONS [Office for National Statistics] and received this response today from the ONS:

"I just wanted to check that you got a satisfactory response on this from No.10"

Alas, I had to reply:

"Not a squeak"

It's a great pity, because if 'social capital' and 'social and domestic cohesion' were being measured with neighbourhod indices - like 7 of the 8 indicators of deprivation [see other posts with 'neighbourhood statistics' labels] described by the Social Exclusion Unit - and if the figures had improved in the last couple of years, the government's claim that the UNICEF figures are out of date would hold some water. As it is, especially with the apparent disappearance of the 'social capital project' altogether, who knows what to believe? It certainly looks as if HMG is keen to suppress any statistics that could be used for an evaluation by neighbourhood of the effects of family breakdown.

It is also surprising that the Opposition have not been demanding the publication of relevant figures, since their sudden conversion to the idea of 'family friendly' policies.

The fable of the [New Labour] grasshopper and the [Compassionate Conservative] squirrel is instructive.

Social exclusion - "force" lone parents into work [strong words at the Guardian] - or encourage them to get married first and stay married?

2007-02-13T11:50:00.000Z

"......... ministers are fully entitled to now begin examining ways of increasing the pressure on lone parents to rejoin the workforce"

"Mr Hutton [John Hutton - Work and Pensions Secretary] is now in Australia looking at ways in which their church groups and other parts of the voluntary and private sectors have contributed to an apparent success story there. Some will bridle at the government's interest in such options. But if they prove to have been a better way of helping some long-term unemployed lone parents back into work, then it is hard to see what the argument either of principle or of practice against the approach can be" - runs the Guardian leader [Tuesday February 13, 2007].

Perish the thought that "church groups" and "other parts of the voluntary and private sectors may have contributed to an apparent success story" that can be translated to the UK! The prospect seems to stick in the gullets of some Guardian readers, for example:

"No! Forget Thatcherism, the Blairites have now turned to Duncan-Smithism for their inspiration! Churches and charity is not the route to take. What next, the workhouse?"

But what if churches and other community groups can contribute to actually reducing the number of single mothers by providing marriage and relationship education?

Lord Lester's Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill which is an amendment to The Family Law Act 1996 is intended "to make provision for protecting individuals against being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent, and for connected purposes." [please see previous item in this blog]

Let us hope John Hutton will be considering the "connected purposes".

Towards the end of last Conservative government, Paul Boateng, then Shadow LCD spokesman in the House of Commons [Hansard Column 484 and 485 24 Apr 1996] said:

“........ there is no preparation at all for civil marriage.......... the Government also have to come forward with proposals in relation to preparation for marriage and with proposals that recognise the need for concerted and focused action to support the institution of marriage and the family......... ".

This was a sentiment expressed in opposition which has not found any active reflection when in government by New Labour - nor very much, until recently, by the Conservatives - but, 'heigh ho', which of us is always entirely consistent?

Nor does the Church always follow through on its best ideas. The Review of the Year by Dr David Edwards, Provost Emeritus of Southwark, for The 1997 Church of England Year Book, contained a reference to pre-marital couples and to a certificate or agreement between them before marriage:

"It would be no panacea, but it might be useful, if it was made compulsory for the couple to sign and keep a certificate that the main obligations of a marriage between Christians, put in plain language, had been discussed and accepted."

In the recent debate on Lord Lester's Bill [Second Reading Friday 26th January 2007], Lord Desai said:

"When they grant visas to decide entry to this country, Her Majesty's Government should try to have a separate interview with the bride to see whether she is being used as an excuse for coming here. The interview should include people who can facilitate conversation, not only interpreters but socially-skilled people who could reassure the woman that if she tells the truth she will not be victimised."

We can see here the beginning of a convergence of ideas around the value of marriage being voluntarily entered into with "free and full consent" between the parties, and then maintained, and how properly facilitated conversations beforehand about the issues commonly faced in marriage can be used to assist engaged individuals in making a valid commitment to each other.

As John Hutton may discover, they do a lot more of this sort of marriage preparation in Australia - using research-based premarital inventories - than is done here. How else can you demonstrate "free and full consent"?

Furthermore, the research evidence is mounting that preventative programmes are working, though doubtless it will stick in the gullets of some Guardian readers, and - as Archbishop Dr Rowan Williams might say - in those of "the commentating classes of North London".

Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill

2007-02-09T21:36:00.000Z

Lord Lester is proposing an amendment to The Family Law Act 1996 "to make provision for protecting individuals against being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent, and for connected purposes."

His associates are saying, "We welcome suggestions and input from organisations and individuals."

Please send your response including your name, organisation (if any) and contact details by 28 February 2007 to:

The Odysseus Trust
193 Fleet Street
London EC4A 2AH
Tel: 020 7404 4712
Fax: 020 7405 7314
Email: info@odysseustrust.org

Background information and the draft Bill, are at the web site above. The Bill was introduced into the House of Lords on 16 November 2006 and had its Second Reading debate on Friday 26 January 2007. The Bill was committed to a Grand Committee on 5 February 2007.

This is an excellent opportunity for people who believe in preventative measures to ask for any "connected purposes" to be addressed in the Bill.

I am suggesting two additional clauses should be added to section 2 of the draft Bill concerning 'guidance', which starts with 2 (a) the difference between arranged and forced marriage:

(e) the opportunities and advantages for the parties to protect themselves and each other against any possible accusations about the marriage being one that is forced or bogus by participating together in a research-based educational programme of marriage preparation - including an independently validated psychometric inventory - to assist them in confirming to the Registrar or deputy Registrar the voluntary nature of their commitment to the marriage.

(f) the advantage of obtaining a certificate from the facilitator of the programme of marriage preparation that they have satisfactorily completed both the educational programme and the inventory.

I should be very interested - as ever - to hear the views of any readers of this blog.

13% rise in post-Christmas abortions charity records

2007-02-08T14:52:00.000Z

Charity records 13% rise in post-Christmas abortions says the Guardian: which is interesting in the context of the previous item on this blog.

Phil Woolas [Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government] said [please see previous item], "the Government do not collect statistics on numbers of family breakdowns outside of divorce, given that relationship breakdowns outside of divorce are difficult to define and record. Community cohesion measurements primarily focus on how well people from different backgrounds get on together in the local area......."

Difficult to define or record abortions? Surely not! Abortions - along with sexually transmitted infections [STIs or STDs - depending on the language you speak] and along with a great many other statistics - such as missing persons and domestic violence - are routinely recorded. They are all manifestations of relationship or family breakdown that could be used to compile an index of social and domestic cohesion.

So why doesn't HMG want to publish such an index in order that changes in neighbourhood social and domestic cohesion or social capital can be measured?

The only possible explanation is that New Labour doesn't like the electoral implications.

"Parliament cannot tiptoe around this matter for much longer" - Alistair Burt MP [Shadow Minister for Communities & Local Government]

2007-02-08T06:14:00.000Z

Dan Boucher, CARE’s Director of Parliamentary Affairs said, “Given its undisputed positive impact, with all kinds of public policy benefits, we believe that government should work to support and strengthen the institution of marriage in Britain today both through fiscal policy and through greater investment ‘proactively’ in marriage preparation as well as ‘reactively’ through marriage guidance counselling. At the beginning of National Marriage week [5th February 2007] we would urge the government to back its rhetorical commitment to the value of marriage with robust marriage friendly policies.”

On the same day as the launch of National Marriage Week, James Brokenshire (Hornchurch, Conservative) [Shadow Minister - Homeland Security] asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, "how she measures the extent of family breakdown in the context of her policies on community cohesion; whether figures on family breakdown are collected by (a) region and (b) local authority area; and if she will make a statement?"

Phil Woolas [Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government] responded lamely, "The Government do not collect statistics on numbers of family breakdowns outside of divorce, given that relationship breakdowns outside of divorce are difficult to define and record. Community cohesion measurements primarily focus on how well people from different backgrounds get on together in the local area......."

So never mind the fact that there were 35,000 reported incidents of domestic violence in West Yorkshire last year and the year before, let's talk about 'how well people from different backgrounds get on together in the local area'; so much easier to 'define and record'!

The ONS don't even publish divorce figures by neighbourhood or local authority, so the fact of the matter is that HMG is seriously not interested in trying to "measure the extent of family breakdown in the context of .... policies on community cohesion", indeed, nor in any other context.

And this is despite what Phil Woolas said on Thursday 20 October 2005 in a debate about the Social Exclusion Unit, "The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire [Alistair Burt] concluded his thoughtful speech by making some suggestions for the future. I shall certainly respond to his requests. I am particularly interested in his third point, because he said something important. It is clear to us all, and from the evidence and analysis provided by the social exclusion unit, that stability in a child's life is a key driver.......... Government policy is, of course, not intended to discriminate against marriage or family. Sometimes, I have to acknowledge that, unintentionally, it may seem to do so and, on occasion, probably does. The policy is for a stable and normal environment for children and young people with difficult lives."

"Government policy is, of course, not intended to discriminate against marriage or family." He must be joking!

[The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Dr Rowan Williams, was bitterly ironic at the launch of Mational Marriage Week: "the fluidity and changeability of relationships and the transience of marriage may look perfectly fine if you belong to the commentating classes of north London, but you don’t have to go very many miles to see what the cost is for people who can’t take that sort of thing for granted."]

Alistair Burt had said, "....... let me deal with the toughest nut of all. The Minister talked about digging deeper and thinking more radically, so let me ask him this question. What role does the unit believe family and relationship breakdown in the UK play in long-term deprivation and social exclusion? The Minister and the unit must now realise, after so many of its projects and researches, that such breakdown has had a catastrophic effect, that it is getting worse, and that there are no substantial policy initiatives to address it. There are initiatives to ameliorate the symptoms and to compensate for the losses incurred, but that is not enough. Years of study have now made it clear just how damaging relationship and family breakdown is. The Government, the Opposition and Parliament cannot tiptoe around this matter for much longer."

But they are all still on tiptoe. There are no policies from any political quarter.

"Dismemberment of the traditional family" by the bishop of Motherwell

2007-02-04T07:27:00.000Z

"Families matter because almost every social problem that we face - soaring teenage pregnancies, abortions and single mums, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, binge drinking, vandalism, violence and crime, the burgeoning of mental illness and sexually transmitted diseases among the young, educational failure, the breakdown in civility, and increasing harassment and contempt for the elderly, the vulnerable and the weakest members of our communities - all come down, in part at least, to the dismemberment of the traditional family.

Consecutive governments' policies, certainly for the best part of two decades, have put our country on the fast track to social dislocation. Inequality has not been reduced. Family breakdown, addiction and dependency have increased. Social divisions have not been healed. Nor can the Conservative opposition take the moral high ground given their earlier opposition to measures aimed at tackling poverty such as the minimum wage, maternity leave and flexible working.

Our governments in Westminster and Holyrood have dared not whisper the terms marriage and the traditional family for fear of being branded politically incorrect by the liberal secular lobby. They have signed up to the dangerous fiction that all lifestyles are equal and that all types of family are equally good at bringing up children. It is time to challenge them to change the direction of their social policies and recognise the damage caused by their compliance with liberal secular policy advisers.

With elections looming, voters must impress on all parties the need to promote family stability through strategies which incentivise and support marriage as well as a socially just, wide-ranging package of policies dealing with poverty reduction, deprivation and exclusion. My vote will go to the party that commits itself to detailed, credible and concrete policies that place marriage, committed parenthood and the family at the heart of its social manifesto. And my public criticism will remain focused on those who do not.

The right reverend Joseph Devine is bishop of Motherwell." He is writing in The Sunday Herald [4th February 2007].

I agree almost completely with the bishop of Motherwell, but the Labour government is also trying to have it both ways: it is deterring teenage motherhood on the grounds that the outcomes for children are poor, whilst at the same time maintaining the mantra "we shall not promote one type of family structure as opposed to another". The outcomes for children of unmarried parents generally are worse than for those with parents who are married, so why not promote marriage and deter cohabitation?

In England the Conservatives control the Local Government Association, so they could be doing much more to promote similar policies to those outlined by the bishop of Motherwell - if they wanted to.

"Race after failure" - "Government have not been tough on the causes of crime"

2007-02-03T08:48:00.000Z

Hard on the heals of the resignation of Professor Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board, comes a debate in the House of Lords [1st February 2007] on 'Reoffending'. A common theme is 'family breakdown', expressed particularly by Conservative Peers.

But when will they get the message that no one is going to believe in 'compassionate Conservatism' until the Party commits to having 'social and domestic cohesion' measured in an index by neighbourhood like the other 7 indicators of social exclusion? People take the trouble to measure and maintain what they really value.

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone [Liberal Democrat] who initiated the debate asked: What is the cost? The Social Exclusion Unit has estimated that the cost to the country of current reoffending is at least £11 billion. The Government have promised 8,000 more prison places to meet this crisis, which will take several years to bring on stream, by which time that, too, will be inadequate. Building the promised new prisons will cost the country £1.5 billion, and each place around £100,000. This is a huge price to pay when building more and more prisons does not and cannot solve the problem. It is merely a race after failure......... Broken families and relationships, and lost jobs and housing are so often the outcome of imprisonment, yet they are the very things on which going straight depends. We further disable people with this form of punishment which in turn creates the very conditions for the ever-increasing reoffending rates.

Lord Ramsbotham said: For years, the received wisdom has been that being near home, a job and a stable relationship are the three factors most likely to prevent reoffending, all of which are put at risk by imprisonment.

Viscount Bridgeman summed up for the Conservatives: This could not be a more timely debate. The prisons are full; potential prisoners are walking free following the Home Secretary’s instructions to the judiciary; Professor Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board has resigned, stating that children’s prisons are being swamped; Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, has stated that the Home Office has failed to carry out proper planning; and the police have recorded violent crime increasing year on year......... the Government often fail to take account of the research evidence that they have themselves sponsored...... Perhaps that explains why, at present, 60 per cent of adult offenders are reconvicted within two years of being released from prison or commencing a community sentence. As we have heard today, for those released from prison, the reoffending rate is higher at 66 per cent and, embarrassingly for the Government, the reoffending rate for those on drug treatment and testing orders stands at an astonishing 89 per cent....... I am sure that we all agree that custodial sentencing is not necessarily ideal. Prison can break up families, impede resettlement and place children at risk of an intergenerational cycle of crime...... The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has previously said—I hope that I cite him correctly—that the three things that are most likely to prevent reoffending are a home, a job and a stable relationship. Programmes that help prisoners to develop skills and maintain contact—that enable all three while providing justice and a deterrent—seem to be the ideal to be aimed at. This House also often comments on young offenders, more than 70 per cent of whom come from broken homes. This is one area in which the Government have not been tough on the causes of crime. The report of the Social Justice Policy Group, under the chairmanship of my right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith, entitled Breakdown Britain, concludes that government thinking here, as on prisons, has been short-term. It says:

“The narrow focus on a wholly inadequate poverty target, followed by complacent trumpeting of supposedly major reductions in poverty, has obscured the scale of the problems that have yet to be tackled”.

Poverty, family breakdown, mental health and drug or substance abuse are all undeniable factors in the lives of those who offend and reoffend.

Lord Bassam of Brighton closing the debate for the Government said: We have done much to ensure that family ties are kept up when people are imprisoned. We are developing a cross-government approach to improve support for children and families of offenders to reduce the risk of reoffending, because we understand the important part that family life plays for many of those who have to be incarcerated. That work is being overseen by a joint DfES/Home Office steering group, which will report, as I said earlier, to the inter-ministerial group chaired by my noble friend Lady Scotland and Phil Hope. We have committed a considerable sum of money to ensure that that important work with children and families is undertaken.

So why do members of the Government keep repeating the mantra "We shall not promote one type of family structure as opposed to another" when the evidence shows - as they know it does with teenage motherhood - that the outcomes for children are generally better when the parents are married?

Unsustainable long term consequences of failure in the Youth Justice system

2007-01-27T10:38:00.000Z

"Over the past three years, the number of juveniles in custody has shot up by 25 per cent to almost 3,000 and, as with adult jails, there are hardly any places left.

Prof Morgan, 64, a former chief inspector of probation, is highly respected in the criminal justice world and his criticisms will strike a chord among penal reform groups and children's charities."

So says Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor in The Telegraph today.

Prof Rod Morgan is calling for more emphasis on "early prevention" rather than locking up young people, where he says the criminal justice system is more likely to develop their taste for criminality than cure it.

He suggests concentration on:

School attendance
Academic achievement
Pupils at risk of exclusion from school.

He talks about the unsustainable long term consequences of failure in the Youth Justice system.

Prof Rod Morgan's resignation adds weight to the argument that the issues around school attendance should be monitored and measured.

However, it does not yet appear to have dawned upon the authorities that nothing less than sustained measurement of the development of the non-cognitive skills will enable schools to accurately report on personal, social, and emotional progress.

Social exclusion debate - more "lies", statistics and "earache" for MPs

2007-01-13T09:36:00.000Z

The Guardian 'Yesterday in Parliament' report included a reference to the debate in the House of Commons on social exclusion on 11th January:

"Inequality - The government and the opposition clashed over levels of inequality with Tories claiming Labour's policy was having "little impact" on the problem. Both parties cited figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies with Tory spokesman Oliver Heald arguing that Labour had not halted the rise in inequality of income. Social exclusion minister Hilary Armstrong said the IFS called Labour's record a "remarkable achievement" although she later conceded it also said inequality had been "largely unchanged" under Labour."

Maybe the IFS thinks it is a "remarkable achievement" that under Labour income inequality has not got worse.

The debate lasted from 12.30 to 6pm. 17 Labour members, 8 Conservatives, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 Plaid Cymru member spoke or intervened. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab) spoke movingly when he described his constituency:

"Fifty-eight per cent. of youngsters are born out of wedlock. I make no moral judgment about that, but it is a structural phenomenon that needs to be addressed. One in seven young people who go to secondary school cannot read the first lesson that is put in front of them. My constituency sends the lowest number of youngsters to university. These and many other statistics underline why it is vital that social exclusion—as someone said, why don’t we call it social inclusion?—is paramount on the Government’s agenda.

For me, the key thing is that we start to tackle causes rather than merely chase the consequences. That is where the debate has moved on to. We have seen today from the Front Benches—all parties have been responsible—that we chase after the difficulties and try to mitigate them, because that is what gets into the newspapers and what we get earache about. But we should take our political responsibilities even more seriously and work back to find out how we can prevent things from happening in the first place. It is evident now that the Government are addressing the problems in that way."

Natascha Engel (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab) was in no mood to humour the House when she said:

"I am going to break the sort of consensus we have seen in the House today—I would like to vent my spleen about the report on social justice produced by the Tory party........"

The Member responsible, Iain Duncan Smith, was not present. Maybe he had been warned of Mrs Engel's spleen. Not for her was it a matter of concern that 58% of Mr Allen's youngsters in Nottingham are born out of wedlock.

"..... to suggest that the breakdown of marriages is the reason why we have social exclusion in our society is not only wrong but deeply offensive ........ " she railed, even though Graham Allen was saying:

"........ it is a structural phenomenon that needs to be addressed........ For me, the key thing is that we start to tackle causes rather than merely chase the consequences."

Oliver Heald (Conservative Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire North East, Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) provided some clues as to how MPs might "start to tackle causes rather than merely chase the consequences", ending his speech with:

"We also need to trust local government, and to accept that civil servants and Ministers in Whitehall might not have all the answers. We need to move away from thinking that everything is the responsibility of the state, and towards a new spirit of social responsibility in which we work together to empower local people and local communities. We should not be so arrogant as to believe that politicians have all the answers. Our approach should not be solely about what the Government can do. It should be about what people can do, and what society can do, because we are all in this together."

Did he mention how "to empower local people and local communities", possibly by persuading the ONS to publish local figures and an index about social and domestic cohesion? I am afraid not. It seems the Conservative leadership can't or won't make this connection.

In response to such a suggestion from Andrew Selous MP in the debate on the Statistics and Registration Bill [8th January], John Healey said:

"I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will wish to elaborate on that point in the debate on social exclusion that will take place on Thursday........ I am sure that the point that the hon. Gentleman has made—and which he might develop in Thursday's debate—will be taken into account by the statistics board when it comes to discharge its functions."

Sadly, no Conservative MP - let alone a member of the shadow cabinet - was willing to do this. But as T.S. Eliot wrote in both the Four Quartets and in Murder in the Cathedral, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".

Children's centres - an opportunity for family learning?

2007-01-10T18:15:00.000Z

A report by David Singleton, 10 January 2007, in Children Now draws attention to both an opportunity and a potential problem:

"Four children's centres have joined forces to dismiss Government claims about the money being spent on children's centres. The Kent-based centres spoke out after children's minister Beverley Hughes told a select committee that children's centres are being funded at around 66 per cent of the funding level associated with the original Sure Start centres (Children Now, 29 November-5 December 2006).

.......... "The figures we have seen propose that centres in Kent will have to run on close to £160,000 per annum. This compares with an average peak funding level of around £750,000 per annum for Sure Start centres."

Funding problems in children's centres were also flagged up in a major progress report published in December by the Government's spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office found that children's centres are valued by most of the families who use them, but warned that 13 per cent of centres are forecasting a financial deficit for the year. Furthermore, 52 per cent are doing no work to identify the cost or cost-effectiveness of services.

Children's centres were also shamed for not doing enough outreach work.

The report stated that fewer than a third are proactively identifying and taking services out to families with high levels of need. The Government recently revised practice guidance to state that children's centre managers must do more to get marginalised families using their services (Children Now, 6 December 2005-9 January 2006)."

Clearly Children's centres can - potentially - be an important access point for family learning services.

But how will their effectiveness be measured? Being "valued by most of the families who use them" is surely insufficient.

I believe nothing less than an acknowledgement that the measurement of change in 'social and domestic cohesion' by neighbourhood will do. Without proper evaluation, all the talk about 'respect' and ASBO's is mere rhetoric. Truancy, teenage pregnancy, abortion, out of wedlock births, the marriage/divorce ratio, domestic violence - all these are indicators of change in social and domestic cohesion, and could be expressed in a neighbourhood index.

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

2007-01-09T21:09:00.000Z

The debate about the Statistics and Registration Service Bill [8th January 2007] is interesting.

Much of the data about 'social and domestic cohesion' is already 'collected', but it is not published in a coherent form by neighbourhood with an index, whereas the other 7 indicators of deprivation do have statistics published, and an index for each. This means there is a league table for each topic for all neighbourhoods. Over time it would be possible to see which neighbourhoods are climbing out of deprivation and which are sinking into it.

There does not seem to be any good reason for suppressing the information about family breakdown. No one in the Government or on the Labour benches seems to be at all anxious to explain why 'family breakdown' is omitted, and only a very few Conservatives seem to be at all concerned. David Cameron has spoken a lot about family breakdown, but he has not - as far as I am aware - said anything about the need to publish relevant neighbourhood statistics.

Kali Mountford MP said in the debate that Andrew Selous MP "talked about understanding deprivation, and ... seemed to have already made a judgment about what [he] thought might be an underlying cause—the breakdown of family life".

Family breakdown is already one of the causes of deprivation listed at HMG's social exclusion website, so it is understandable people draw the same conclusion. Since HMG has already concluded family breakdown is one of the causes of social exclusion, it is perverse in the extreme not to try to measure it.

It would improve the services of UpMyStreet if they publish relevant statistics, indices and league tables [based on ONS figures] about deprivation by neighbourhood.

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" - are we getting any closer to the truth about family breakdown?

2007-01-01T07:59:00.000Z

Lord Skelmersdale spoke for the Conservatives in the House of Lords [21st November 2006] in the debate on the Queen's Speech. He said:

"....... That brings me on to statistics. No one who heard Her Majesty on Wednesday could have missed the laughter when she said:

“Legislation will be introduced to create an independent board to enhance confidence in Government statistics”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/06; col. 4.]

Statistics are at the very heart of social security. Even if a Minister thinks that it would be a good idea to change something, such as creating a new benefit, they will get nowhere without discovering what is going on now and with how many people, and how many gainers and losers there will be as a result of the proposal. My honourable friends and I have recently been trying to get to the bottom of social exclusion—a very big subject. We recognise that we cannot do so until we know exactly how many adults and children are involved. The Social Exclusion Unit, which this Government set up, lists the main causes and consequences. Statistics exist for all of them, except family breakdown. Yet, recently, in a Written Answer, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, told me:

“It is estimated that each year between 150,000 and 200,000 couples with children separate”. He will remember that, no doubt. He continued:

“This is made up of 100,000 divorces, and between 50,000 and 100,000 cohabiting relationships breaking down”.—[Official Report, 18/10/06; col. WA 191.]

That is not very helpful. Both he and I would need much better figures than those to convince a Treasury colleague to spend money on even a part of the problem. I can only hope that the new board will sort this out and, most importantly, that members of the board, not Ministers, decide what is to be subject to the proposed code of conduct and Ministers do not have a veto on their publication. Is that a pipe dream? Maybe it is, but no more than many of the aspirations underlying the legislation proposed in the gracious Speech."

In an earlier speech in the House of Commons, [25th July 2006] Andrew Selous said:

"........... My third point is the need for an index of social and domestic cohesion. That sounds like a bit of a mouthful, but the House will have an opportunity to do something about it when the Bill on the Office for National Statistics is introduced in the autumn. It is a curious fact that the social exclusion unit lists eight indicators of social deprivation, one of which is family breakdown. All the other seven indicators are reflected in the indices of deprivation published in the ONS neighbourhood statistics, but family breakdown is not. There is no reason for that omission and we could rectify it in the House in the autumn. I urge my Front-Bench colleagues and the Government to consider the matter when the Bill comes before the House."

Both Lord Skelmersdale and Andrew Selous are Shadow DWP Ministers, concerned with the issues of work and benefits. It is encouraging that they are talking about the provision of relevant statistics for family breakdown, or social and domestic cohesion, which places the issue in a broader context.

How long will it take for either the Labour Government or the Conservatives to announce a policy for improving social and domestic cohesion and reducing family breakdown?

This policy should include publishing an index and neighbourhood statistics which can be understood and used by local leaders - GP's and health visitors, school governors, parish councillors, faith and other community leaders - in order to measure local changes in social and domestic cohesion.

".......aspects of social exclusion are deeply intractable" [or are we just failing to measure them properly?]

2006-12-31T15:52:00.000Z

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said in a speech entitled, "Our sovereign value: fairness" :

"...... some aspects of social exclusion are deeply intractable. The most socially excluded are very hard to reach. Their problems are multiple, entrenched and often passed down the generations."

There is a hint - with "generations" - that the most intractable problems are connected with parenting, though nothing to suggest that the difficulties in parenting could be connected with the relationship of the parents.

In contrast, the Conservatives seem to be suggesting that both the relationship of the parents and the family structure are important, and they point out that the break up rate of couples with children is much greater for cohabiting as compared with married couples.

Tony Blair identified 4 groups with special problems:

"1. ...... 61,000 children in care at any one time. They run very high risks of being unemployed, having mental health problems and becoming teenage parents. We need to be frank - we are not yet succeeding. 1 in 10 children in care get 5 good GCSEs compared to 6 out of 10 of other children. Only 6 per cent make it to higher education compared to 30 per cent of all children.

2. Second, families with complex problems - the Respect Task Force identified 7,500 such families. A child born into the most disadvantaged 5 per cent of families is 100 times more likely to have multiple problems at age 15 than a child from the 50 per cent best-off families. One of the biggest problems we face is parents who misuse alcohol. One in eleven children in the UK live with at least one such parent. These children have to take on more responsibility for running their family, they worry that the secret might be revealed, they often struggle at school and many start to use alcohol and drugs themselves.

3. Third, teenage pregnancies, of which there are 40,000 in the UK at any one time. Like looked-after children, teenage parents are more likely to end up unemployed, have mental health problems and themselves have children who have babies as teenagers. We have made some progress here - conception rates are at their lowest for 20 years.

4. And fourth, mental health patients. Between 125,000 and 600,000 people in Britain have a severe and enduring mental health problem. About 70,000 are on Incapacity Benefit and employment rates among the mentally ill have been falling, despite the fact that the majority are keen to work. The links with other problems are notable: half of those mis-using drug and alcohol have mental health problems.

The fact that we have yet to succeed with these groups is not for want of spending. The state spends £1.9bn acting in loco parentis for children in care. It costs about £110,000 a year to keep a child in residential care. And there is very little relationship between spending and outcomes. Families with complex problems cost between £50,000 and £250,000 each. Every teenage pregnancy costs an average of £57,900 in the first five years. A mental health bed costs £1,365 a week.

The problem is not that we are not trying, nor that the money is not being committed. It is that we need a radical revision of our methods. The Social Exclusion Plan will be guided by five principles: early intervention, systematically identifying what works, better co-ordination of the many separate agencies, personal rights and responsibilities and intolerance of poor performance.

......... The protective factors are not surprising - affectionate families, adequate attention from parents......

......... It might mean that a more intense health-visitor programme is arranged. Or it might mean parenting classes are offered.........

......... Of course prediction will never be perfect. But the combination of risk and protection means that we can now be reasonably confident that we can identify likely problems at a very early stage.

At any one time, children in care make up about 0.5 per cent of all children. But one quarter of the adult prison population has been in the children's care system at some point.

Around a third of looked-after children end up as NEETs (not in employment, education or training).

The daughter of a teenage mother is twice as likely to become a teenage mother compared with a daughter of an older mother.

Children from the 5 per cent of the most disadvantaged households are more than 100 times more likely to have multiple problems at age 15 than those from the 50 per cent of most advantaged households.

Boys with a convicted father are over three times more at risk of being convicted of a crime than those with a non-convicted father.

125,000 children have a parent in custody - and 65 per cent of children with parents in prison go on to offend.

We then need to be clear about schemes that work and encourage the spread of good practice. We will provide a government hallmark for programmes that have proved to be effective........ We will incentivise good practice.............."

[Like marriage? Preparation for marriage?]

It is not for the State to tell people that they cannot choose a different lifestyle, for example in issues to do with sexuality. All that has changed and rightly. But where children are involved and are in danger of harm or where people are a risk to themselves or others, it is our duty not to stand aside. Their fate is our business."

There is a stark anomoly - amounting to hypocrisy - in what Tony Blair is saying:

a) "It is not for the State to tell people that they cannot choose a different lifestyle, for example in issues to do with sexuality.............." [i.e. 'cohabit if you wish'] and, in the same breath

b) "We will incentivise good practice" [but in practice do the opposite by incentivising cohabitation and single parenthood].

In fact, far from "systematically identifying what works", Tony Blair and his colleagues take a myopic view of the research that points to the benefits of marriage and of research informed marriage preparation programmes.

Is it adhering to the "sovereign value: fairness" when you only look at research which supports your point of view?

Like Labour the Conservatives tend to quote national figures.

The most powerful motivator would be to publish all the relevant neighbourhood statistics for social and domestic cohesion - combined with an index - so local leaders, GPs and health visitors, parish councillors, school governors, faith and other community leaders can easily measure whether their area is becoming more or less cohesive, and to what extent local policies and programmes are working.

Labour have created a precedent for this with their local authority league table of performance in reducing teenage pregnancy.

But teenage pregnancy is only one aspect of social and domestic cohesion; figures for the other elements and an index should be published, and by neighbourhood, as well as by local authority.

US “marriage movement"

2006-12-27T09:20:00.000Z

In the first in a four-part series in the Washington Times Cheryl Wetzstein writes:

…In the marriage arena, two forces for change have been particularly notable. One is a “marriage movement,” formed six years ago to reverse the trend of family breakdown in America.

Current domestic policies “are based on acceptance of family breakdown and are focused on dealing with the aftermath and fallout,” Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, said when the group’s “statement of principles” was announced in June 2000. The original statement — signed by more than 100 academic, religious, political and civic leaders — was updated in 2004, with 86 pledges for action, including expanding marriage education, reforming state divorce laws and developing model pro-marriage legislation.

Pro-marriage allies also received an unprecedented boost this year when 225 pro-marriage and responsible-fatherhood organizations were awarded federal grants worth nearly $120 million a year. The new five-year funding “shows where our priorities are,” says Elizabeth Marquardt, author of “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce” and director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values. It also revealed an important political consensus — that both Republicans and Democrats think marriage matters, she says. Such a consensus “is a significant achievement” that should bring long-term dividends, beyond the marriage grants. more

How long will it take for a "political consensus" that "marriage matters" to develop in the UK? The first stage could be for local authorities - persuaded by the benefits - to promote local policies for social and domestic cohesion and education programmes through register offices, schools, and adult and family learning centres.

People who would like to write to their local councillors can do so very easily by visiting www.campaignon.com/cohesion

Local policies for domestic and social cohesion

2006-12-19T12:58:00.000Z

David Cameron "has re-committed himself to supporting marriage through the tax system", though 'Breakdown Britain' was not supposed to be about remedies, which are to come later.

It's a bit rich for him to say so, but Michael Portillo argues:

"[David Cameron] has already jumped to the conclusion that family breakdown is at the heart of our horrendous social problems, and has re-committed himself to supporting marriage through the tax system. Duncan Smith looked embarrassed as Cameron converted 300,000 words of serious study into a soundbite that endorsed his preconceptions.....
..............Cameron’s idea of tax breaks is a worthy successor to Marie Antoinette’s exhortation that the poor eat cake when short of bread........... By commissioning Duncan Smith’s reports Cameron has made inequality a political issue. But it is still hard to believe that either the Tories or Labour are serious about tackling it." 'Duncan Smith pins down Britain, the unequal nation'

It really would be fairer to increase the personal tax allowance and make it transferable between spouses, as the Conservatives seem to be suggesting. Not only would it be helpful to poorer married couples with children and only one earner, but it would also help poorer retired couples - with one personal or occupational pension - to avoid the need to claim a currently means tested pension credit. This is social justice, but for the distant future, maybe 2010 or later. As has been amply demonstrated by research from CARE and CIVITAS , the current tax/benefit system favours cohabitation and single parents at the expense of married couples. The balance must be redressed.

At the next general election the Conservatives will need to convince the electorate that they mean what they say well before it. A tax break for married couples was belatedly introduced in the manifesto before last, a proposal to make the personal tax allowance transferable for couples with children up to the age of eleven.

This was when Michael Portillo was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. There was no such commitment in the last manifesto. It doesn't really look as if it is something the Conservatives believe in for the purposes of furthering social justice, more of a ploy to attract votes when it suits them, especially in the light of Michael Portillo's underhand reference to "Marie Antoinette’s exhortation that the poor eat cake", since he had proposed it in an earlier election.

Conservative local authorities could to be operating pro-marriage and family policies well before the next election. At present electors are entitled to ask, "What are the Conservatives actually doing now - in places where they have control - to support marriage and family life?"

The truth is, "precious little"!

Michael Portillo says, "...... it is still hard to believe that either the Tories or Labour are serious about tackling [inequality]". The Conservatives don't have their hands on many of the levers of power, but they do control the Local Government Association. David Cameron seems to be willing to announce tax breaks for married couples, so let's hear from him soon about the practicable measures the Conservatives could implement locally now. He could very easily prove that Michael Portillo is wrong.

Promoting local policies for social and domestic cohesion based on neighbourhood statistics would be a good start. Marriage and family policy is much more susceptible to efforts made in homes and neighbourhoods - with the backing of faith and community leaders - than to the rhetoric emanating from Westminster, especially when it comprises tax breaks that cannot be implemented for several years hence, and to which no immediate political or financial cost is attached.

Advertising marriage and family learning programmes - run by voluntary groups - through register offices and other venues operated by local authorities, following guidelines recommended by the Local Government Association, would demonstrate that the Conservatives "are serious about tackling [inequality]".

Will the Conservatives go for the bird in hand, or carry on talking about [those tax breaks in] the bushes? As Janet Daley says, “Don’t talk, fix it!”

More on SEAL - taking ownership - talk2me

2006-12-15T10:47:00.000Z

The SEAL guidance recommends:

"When teaching social, emotional and behavioural skills the teacher/practitioner should be constantly asking themselves how they can encourage children to take ownership. Ideas might include:

• involving children fully in the decision to implement the SEAL curricular approach, and making sure they, as well as adults, understand the purpose of the work and the hoped-for outcomes;
• involving them in the identification of criteria that demonstrate success;
• involving them in the evaluation of their learning;
• providing choice as to how activities and tasks are completed and information presented;
• allowing them to determine their own questions for enquiry and debate;
• using behaviour management techniques that encourage children to make a choice about their behaviour;
• providing opportunities for children to determine class and playground rules and routines, and ground rules for the activities to develop their social, emotional and behavioural skills;
• providing opportunities for children to explore how they might establish a classroom environment and ethos that promotes good learning and emotional well-being.

Many schools have school councils that allow children to take part in decision-making within the whole-school context. These are most effective when they are supported by regular class councils or circle time that provide a forum for class and school issues to be discussed."

This last point: "school councils that allow children to take part in decision-making" is a good way of "involving them in the identification of criteria that demonstrate success [and] involving them in the evaluation of their learning........"

A good way to advance and to evaluate progress in personal, social and emotional education is to use talk2me. The school council can be involved in the process of implementing talk2me which will prompt the pupils to think about "taking ownership".

SEAL - Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning

2006-12-14T18:21:00.000Z

The SEAL guidance contains this:

"Most primary schools and settings are clearly doing much to promote social and emotional learning already as a key aspect of their school or setting culture. They may do this through the whole-school environment, the Foundation Stage personal, social and emotional area of learning and the Key Stages 1 and 2 PSHE/Citizenship curriculum,1 their approach to spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, the framework of the National Healthy School Standard (NHSS), or through the opportunities they provide for art, music and drama. Or they may be promoting children’s development through other initiatives such as circle time, self-esteem approaches, peer mediation, and commercially available schemes that specifically teach social, emotional and behavioural skills. In addition many schools and settings provide extra support for children whose behavioural, social or emotional development is of concern."

So it's Ok for children to learn "spiritual, moral, social and cultural development", but if politicians mention it in the context of single mothers, cohabiting couples, or any other adult group shown by research to be more likely to be associated with poor outcomes than married couples, is it simply a case of 'nanny state' interfering? What's wrong with giving adults the chance to engage in "spiritual, moral, social and cultural development" if they missed out at home or at school?

"The development of skills such as being able to defer gratification, take responsibility for one’s own actions, understand and deal with peer pressure, act assertively, feel positive about oneself and manage an increasingly complex range of feelings......"

Can the development of these 'skills' - what about 'values'? - be explored with adults who wish to learn about them without journalists and politicians pontificating about retrograde steps to Victorian values? There is much humbug in the supposition that what children are expected to learn should not also be understood by adults.

Sex education questions - House of Commons 13/12/06

2006-12-14T16:57:00.000Z

Patrick McFadden (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office) made some sensible comments, including:

"Good quality PSHE can make an important contribution to young people's emotional development. Young people value sex education that is set in the context of discussions about relationships and the responsibilities involved, and that is what the Government aim to provide....."

"....... education should prepare young people for life, and that the emotional aspects of sex education are important. In addition to providing PSHE, we are putting an emphasis on sex and relationship education. A programme on the social and emotional aspects of learning, known as the SEAL programme, is already in place in one third of schools, and another third is expected to introduce it by mid-2007. All that is part of the effort to increase confidence and maturity, and to help to prepare young people for coping with making important decisions later in life......"

"It is absolutely right to say that parental involvement and a parental role is important. It is important, both for parents and schools, that we have a full and frank discussion about the issues. We should discuss them openly and not try to sweep them under the carpet........"

So what is the real difficulty HMG has in inviting prospective parents to discuss marriage and relationships education and in promoting educational programmes through Register Offices and other venues?