The publication of the government’s long-awaited Child Poverty Strategy is a welcome step forward in the commitment to eradicate child poverty, but it fails to address a critical element which could hinder its chances of success – the importance of parental relationships.
Poverty puts additional pressure on parents and can make it harder for them to provide the loving, nurturing home environment that children need. Debt can lead to parents keeping secrets from each other, creating mistrust and increasing the risk of parental conflict. It puts a strain on their physical and mental health as they try to provide for their children. This increases the likelihood of relationship breakdown, which – if handled poorly – can lead to further, negative outcomes for children.
The government acknowledges the important role of mental health support in enabling parents to meet the cognitive, emotional and social development needs of their children. However, it remains unclear how they plan to support families to develop and maintain strong home relationships, and cope with challenging times such as the arrival of a new baby or a separation.
The evidence is clear. The quality of the home environment and social connections that people have is directly linked to how they get on in life. For the child poverty strategy to succeed, it must be underpinned with relationship services that support parents to get on better and model the relational skills that will help their children to break any negative links between their background and future successes.
At the government’s request, OnePlusOne presented evidence which demonstrated that policies underpinning relationship support services have a positive effect on families tackling poverty (Tavistock Institute, 2014). We are disappointed to see that these are not mentioned in the strategy. So far, there has been no ongoing commitment to supporting relationship services by this government. For the first time since the 1940s, the critical support offered to families unable to pay for private services has been left balancing on a knife edge.
We are calling on the government to clarify what they mean by ‘family stability’ and to explain how they intend to achieve this without integrating accessible, evidence-based relationship support services into a cross-department government approach.
We have outlined opportunities for the government to incorporate relationship support into existing pathways accessed by families who may benefit from additional help. Family Hubs present just one opportunity for the government to ensure that support can be made available to every family who needs it.
Research shows a clear link between poverty and relationship breakdown. Poverty increases the likelihood of relationship breakdown, and relationship breakdown exacerbates the effects of poverty.
In addition to policies which help to lift parents out of poverty, separating parents need support to maintain effective co-parenting skills. We have urged the government to continue to fund accessible, evidence-based support for families, and consider embedding courses which help to improve communication and conflict resolution skills into existing national pathways accessed by families affected by separation.
The overhaul of Child Maintenance Services (CMS) announced in this strategy provides an opportunity for the government to continue offering support that has already been found to be successful in helping parents to have a better separation journey. Our Separating better app, created with government funding, is an example of evidence-based support which has been shown to make a positive difference to the lives of parents and children affected by separation. We still do not know if it will remain freely available to parents.
The strategy acknowledges that 51% of children are in poverty in families with no child maintenance arrangement, compared to 37% with an arrangement in place. Equipping parents with the relational skills they need to continue to co-parent effectively after separating will help to lift even more children out of poverty.
We’d like to see this government recognise and support the importance of quality family time for children’s development. Enabling families, whatever they look like, to maintain strong, healthy relationships will set the foundation for success in many other areas of life. We live in a society where even families with two working parents are struggling to lift themselves out of poverty. Offering breakfast clubs to put children into school for longer so that parents can work more hours cannot be the answer.
Family poverty won’t be solved overnight. But if we are to start chipping away at the links that bind children’s future success to their backgrounds, it is vital that we equip parents with relational skills that allow them to deal with the additional strains they face before the negative effects of poverty have a chance to escalate.
