The Relationships Foundation Newsletter September 2011
Winning Women: A Family Friendly Problem, but no Family Friendly Solution
The ‘winning women’ document leaked from Number 10 identifies household worries as part of the Conservative / Coalition difficulty with women voters, but offers no solutions in that direction. Commenting on the document, Michael Trend, Executive Director of the Relationships Foundation, said:
“It is good to know that the government are embarrassed by their failure to make the UK more family friendly, and are worried about women voters. But it is disappointing that they do not look to policies to support families as a solution.”
“Our Pressure Gauge shows that the biggest pressures on households are financial and work related: high housing costs, high levels of debt, unsocial working hours, and high childcare costs.”
“If they want to win women, the government must put family policy at the heart of Government and must start to take the pressure off family life. That means lowering the cost of housing, getting household debt under control, better working hours and more affordable childcare.”
The Number 10 policy document notes:
• A general sense that families who had been struggling to get by even in the ‘good times’ resented being told to tighten their belts.
• Rising cost of living is one of the issues seen to have hit women.
• “There are also areas where we have made bold statements or promises but haven’t delivered enough including, for example, our overarching claim that we would be the most family friendly Government ever.”
But the only family / home based solutions proposed are ‘Parenting education vouchers’, a policy that has not yet been announced, and some thinking on childcare.
Click here for our full press release.
Keep Time for Children welcomes wellbeing report
Commenting on UNICEF’s recent child wellbeing report, Michael Trend of our Keep Time for Children campaign, said:
“The latest UNICEF report on children’s wellbeing is a stark reminder to the government of how much there is to do. UNICEF’s initial report in 2007 was seen as a wake-up call by all parties, but four years on little has changed.”
“Whilst parents choose, or are forced to work long hours because of the pressures of housing costs, household debt, and childcare cost, we will not see child wellbeing improve in this country. It is time for radical solutions, tackling both our social and fiscal deficit.”
“Real progress will not happen until family policy is driven much more strongly from the centre. Kids want strong relationships, with friends, and with parents, and time is the currency of those relationships. The promised ‘family test’ on all policy must ensure that family time is protected.”
Click here for the full press release.
In the media
The Family and Parenting Institute have launched their ‘Developing a Family Test’ report. In it, they reference the work that we have done already in this area. Click to read our case for Family Proofing policy.
We are pleased that the Social Policy Review in the wake of recent riots is looking at ‘the whole set of issues regarding broken society including schools, family policy, parenting, communities. . . and the signals that government sends’. Family policy must be the starting point, as our Penumbra report argues, and family proofing the key.
Debt levels are damaging growth, warns BIS. This news item is one of the many updates that we are regularly adding to Family Pressure Gauge pages on our website, check it out!
Campaigning tip
You can be part of the change we want to see. Responding to government consultations can be very valuable. It can alert the government to areas they might have missed or consequences they might not have thought through. One current consultation is to determine how to support schools to improve the quality of teaching of personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education. This request for representations seeks your views on the core body of knowledge that pupils need to learn through PSHE education teaching and ways to improve the quality of teaching. It just takes a couple of minutes to respond online!
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