The Relationships Foundation welcomes National Family Week.(1) We also welcome the new Government’s commitment to making our society more family friendly. It is a bold pledge, but an important one, as can be seen from our recently updated annual report, Counting the Cost of Family Failure, in which we show how the cost of family failure grew by almost £5 billion last year to £41.7billion or £1,340 per taxpayer.(2) Strengthening families must be at the heart of any strategy for social progress and deficit reduction.
In his first speech as Prime Minister, David Cameron spoke encouragingly about his desire to “build a society with stronger families and stronger communities”. Becoming more family friendly is the right goal – families affect everyone and they affect every part of life. As we showed in our publication When Relationships Go Right/When Relationships Go Wrong families provide social care and support worth £73 billion a year in the UK, and family businesses generate turnover in excess of £1 trillion, contributing £73 billion each year in tax.
However, changing Britain from ‘one of the least family-friendly countries in the world’(3) will require three things:
1. Leadership
While there is much merit in refocusing the Department of Children, Families and Schools on its original role as the Department for Education, losing Family from any Cabinet minister’s primary responsibility is surely a problem for a Government so committed to families. Without a champion at the heart of government, the family-friendly agenda is unlikely to succeed. There needs to be top-level leadership on the family and family policy should have a central role in government, based perhaps at the Cabinet Office, rather than with one of the spending departments. While the new Social Justice Cabinet Committee may enable more joined-up decision making on the family, it will need a team to resource it, and have a strong mandate to influence departmental policies.
2. Strategy
Becoming family-friendly requires a co-ordinated plan to make it happen as it has implications for every government department. The government has recognised this is true of the Big Society – it has Cabinet level responsibility and a clear strategy. This cross-departmental approach is the right one, and, in the case of the family, all policy should be ‘family proofed’. This involves analysing the consequences of any policy, regardless of whether it is explicitly aimed at families, for its impact on family relationships and wellbeing.(4)
3. Assessment
There should be a social budget each year to match the Government’s economic budget. It would set out the government’s plan to strengthen family relationships and support society. It would also set out the current social state of the nation. And there should be a parallel exercise to the Office of Budget Responsibility, providing independent assessment and analyses of the impact of policy on families.
RF Executive Director Michael Trend commented, “Only when there is a clear plan and a strong leadership at the heart of government can we begin to make progress towards becoming the most family-friendly country in Europe.”
ENDS
1 National Family Week runs from 31st May – 6th June 2010. For more information see www.nationalfamilyweek.co.uk
2 Counting the Cost of Family Failure (2010) updates
When Relationships Go Right/When Relationships Go Wrong (2009)
3 The Conservative Manifesto 2010, p 41
4 See The Penumbra Effect – Family-centred Public Policy http://tiny.cc/Penumbra
For more information please contact: John Ashcroft:
j.ashcroft@relationshipsfoundation-org.stackstaging.com 01223 909 408