Relationship Foundation’s Research Director John Ashcroft makes the fiscal case for championing family policy in his recent guest post for Conservative Home, Britain’s leading Conservative blog for news.
In his blog post John Ashcroft points out that any government facing both public expectations of improved public services and challenging fiscal constraints cannot afford to disregard the implications of changing family relationships. This is currently not the case in the UK. Despite considerable rhetoric about family friendly policy the government does not have any official figures on the cost of relationship breakdown, they do not inform budget projections, and with no clear responsibility for over-arching family policy there is no effective mechanism to ensure coherence of family policy across government.
The costs of breakdown affect such areas as health, social care, welfare, housing, education and justice. The Relationships Foundation published our first estimate in 2009 as an invitation to debate and have updated it annually since then. Measures to support families, or avoid undermining them, will often have costs. Providing access to relationships education and counselling, support for family finances through the tax or welfare system, help with care responsibilities, family support workers to work with troubled families, maternity and paternity leave provisions, or restrictions on working long or unsocial hours may all have some costs – directly on government, or sometimes on business. Understanding the costs of relationships breakdown, and the potential for government action to influence the rate of breakdown, is therefore essential in demonstrating the benefits of investing in that support.
This is one reason why the ‘Family Test’ on policy, introduced last year, is so important. If Government does not consistently consider how it is influencing family relationships and create a more supportive environment these costs will continue unabated, the capacity of families to contribute will be constrained and attempts to ‘balance the books’ in ways that meet our aspirations for social and economic progress will fail.
You can read the full blog post here.