for the

Family

for the

Youth

for the

Future

Bulletin 135: Spring 2009

In this issue:

AGM and Conference

Saturday 13 June 2009
Royal Air Force Club, 128 Piccadilly, London W1
10.30am to 4.45pm

This year we are looking forward to welcoming Professor Dennis Hayes, who will address us on the subject of his book, co-authored with Kathryn Ecclestone, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (see review in this Bulletin).

Professor Hayes is the Head of the Centre for Professional Education at Canterbury Christ Church University and a visiting Professor in the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University. He writes regularly for the national press on educational issues and serves on the editorial board of the Times Higher Education magazine.

Our second speaker is Professor David Paton, Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School. Professor Paton has a special research interest in the economics of teenage pregnancy and has had several articles on the subject published in peer-reviewed journals. He will address the conference on ‘Teenage pregnancy: dissecting the evidence’.

As usual, we shall conduct the formal business of the Trust during the morning, with reports from the Chairman, Treasurer and Director, followed by an opportunity to hear from several of our supporters who have been hard at work in support of the family within their own communities.

Please let the office know if you are planning to attend. There is no charge for attending the conference, and we are able to offer a substantial lunch for the subsidised price of £22.50. To reserve a lunch, please send a cheque for £22.50 made payable to ‘Family Education Trust’.

Please join us if you are able for what promises to be a worthwhile and stimulating day.

 

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A Good Childhood

Described as a ‘landmark report’, the findings of the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood inquiry were published amid a great fanfare of publicity in early February. The fruit of a project to which over 35,000 people contributed by means of surveys, interviews and written submissions and which engaged the minds of a panel of 11 experts over a period of 18 months, the resulting report is disappointing in terms of its failure to consistently follow through the evidence presented. At several points there is a disparity between the research and the recommendations. It is almost as if the conclusions had been agreed before the evidence had been sifted and weighed.

‘Excessive individualism’

In spite of advances in technology, communication and education, and increased material prosperity, the authors argue that there has been a marked rise in emotional problems and behavioural difficulties experienced by children and young people. A recurring theme throughout the chapters on family, friends, lifestyle, values, schooling, mental health and inequality is that ‘excessive individualism’ lies at the root of the various social ills afflicting children: ‘high family break-up, teenage unkindness, unprincipled advertising, too much competition in education, and…our acceptance of income inequality’.

Given that the report is co-authored by Lord Layard, frequently dubbed the government’s ‘happiness tsar’, it is no surprise to find a strong emphasis on social and emotional learning, with a recommendation that schools should administer ‘standard assessments of emotional and behavioural well-being to all students at 5, 11 (in primary school) and 14’. The authors also call for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) to be treated as a specialist subject at initial teacher training. With a somewhat utopian turn of phrase, the report claims that: ‘If this happened, it would bring into schools a new cohort, as it were, of missionaries for harmonious living.’

Family changes

In the chapter on the family, the report highlights two major changes affecting children in the past 100 years: the dramatic rise in the numbers of mothers of young children employed outside the home, and the rise in family breakdown. The report comments:

‘Women’s new economic independence contributes to this rise: it has made women much less dependent on their male partner, as has the advent of the welfare state. As a result of increased break-up, a third of our 16 year-olds now live apart from their biological father.’

The report is very clear on the importance of fathers:

‘The closeness of fathers to their children influences the children’s later psychological well-being, even after allowing for the mother’s influence. If fathers are more closely involved with their children, other things being equal, children develop better friendships, more empathy, higher self-esteem, better life-satisfaction, and higher educational achievement. And they are less likely to become involved with crime or substance abuse. In contrast, if children are in conflict with their fathers or find them harsh and neglectful, they are much more likely to become destructive and aggressive themselves.’

Family structure

The damaging effects of family breakdown are addressed in a similarly forthright fashion:

‘The impact on the child of [parental] separation can be seen as early as the age of 3. The table shows some striking findings from the recent British study of children born at the beginning of the new millennium.’

Percentage of children in each group having difficulties
(3-year-olds)
Children living with

Poor conceptual development

Behavioural difficulties
Married parents
Cohabiting parents
Lone parent
Step-parent

9
13
19
23

5
10
15
15

Source: Kiernan K E and Mensah F K (2008), ‘Economic deprivation, maternal depression, parenting and children’s cognitive and emotional development in early childhood’, British Journal of Sociology, 59.

The report continues:

‘When their parents separate, children experience feelings of confusion, sadness and betrayal… From over 90 studies we know that, on average, 50 per cent more children with separated parents have problems than those whose parents have not separated. This is true of a wide range of outcomes: academic achievement, self-esteem, popularity with other children, behavioural difficulties, anxiety and depression.’

Since the report recognises the benefits of stable married families and the damage caused by family breakdown, one might have expected to find marriage featuring strongly in the recommendations, yet it does not receive even a passing mention. The report’s authors go no further than suggesting that ‘when they have a child, the parents should have a long-term commitment to each other as well as to the welfare of the child’ (emphasis added). A clear affirmation of the importance of marriage is relegated to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Afterword 144 pages later, where he writes: ‘it will not serve us as a society, and it will not serve the growing generation, if we simply regard marriage as just one option in the market-place of lifestyles’.

Evidence not reflected in recommendations

As with the Families in Britain evidence paper published in December 2008 (see Bulletin 134), the Good Childhood report recognises the value of marriage for family stability and positive outcomes for children, but does not face up to that reality when it comes to making public policy recommendations.

This disjuncture between evidence and conclusions is found in reverse in connection with the report’s recommendation that Dutch-style sex and relationships education should be made a statutory part of PSHE in British schools. The report does not furnish any evidence for its contention that ‘the more open attitude of Dutch parents and the fact that sex education there begins in primary school’ constitutes ‘one plausible explanation’ for the lower rates of teenage pregnancy in the Netherlands; neither does it consider any other explanations.

Similarly, the report recommends that parents should ‘avoid physical punishments’ as part of an ‘authoritative parenting’ style, without citing any evidence. The assumption seems to be that physical correction is incompatible with an ‘authoritative parenting’ approach, in spite of the fact that Professor Diana Baumrind, who originated the term ‘authoritative parenting’ and who is cited in the present report’s references, has drawn no such conclusion. Rather, she has consistently maintained that the research evidence does not warrant a blanket injunction against the use of moderate physical correction.

A Good Childhood draws together a wealth of research data, but when the evidence fails to support a politically correct conclusion, it is as if there is an unwritten rule in place that requires the conclusion to be drawn anyway. Likewise when the evidence points in a politically incorrect direction, the same rule demands that it is not followed through to its logical conclusion. Thus the indefensible continues to be affirmed and the unthinkable remains unsaid.

Richard Layard and Judith Dunn, A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age, Penguin 2009.

 

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Home Education Review

An independent review of home education is currently being conducted by Graham Badman, the former Managing Director of Children, Families and Education at Kent County Council. The review has been surrounded by considerable controversy, not least for the degree of suspicion and distrust it displays for parents who have opted to home educate their children. The consultation questions asked whether home educated children ‘are able’ to be healthy, safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and achieve economic well-being, and suggested that home educated children may be in need of additional monitoring and safeguarding checks to ensure they are not being abused.

In responding to the review questions, Family Education Trust observed that home educators typically view home education as part of their family life, and that there was no compelling reason why children who continue to experience family life during normal ‘school hours’ should be deemed in need of additional safeguarding or monitoring any more than families where children are out of the house between 9.00am and 3.00pm during term-time. There would be an uproar if the government were to propose routine welfare checks on all children during school holidays and at weekends. Such an intrusion would rightly be regarded as a breach of family privacy.

The Trust also noted that local authorities do not conduct routine safeguarding checks on pre-school aged children who are cared for by a parent or other family member at home on the basis that they are not registered at some form of Ofsted-inspected provision. Such intrusion would be regarded as unacceptable, and it was therefore equally unacceptable to impose safeguarding checks on children who remain at home beyond the age of five.

http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ete/homeeducation/

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Broadcasting standards body bows to pressure from contraception and abortion industries over advertising rules

The British Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) has succumbed to pressure from the government’s Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV and is proposing to relax the current advertising rules in order to permit advertisements for condoms on daytime television. Intended to protect younger viewers from inappropriate advertising, the rules currently state that condoms may not be advertised prior to 9.00pm, except on Channel 4 where they may be advertised from 7.00pm. However, under BCAP’s proposal the restriction would be lifted, subject to a requirement that condoms ‘should not be advertised in or adjacent to programmes commissioned for, principally directed at or likely to appeal particularly to children below the age of 10’.

BCAP acknowledges that the presence of condom advertisements on television continues to be a subject of complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, but states that it ‘has to balance public sensitivities against a public health problem that is clearly urgent’ and believes that advertising condoms at times when more children and young people are in the television audience will ‘normalise’ condom use and lead to an improvement in sexual health.

Consultation

The proposal features on pages 202-203 of a 319-page document containing 157 consultation questions intended to ensure that the advertising standards codes ‘remain relevant and effective, now and into the future’. On pages 90-91, the consultation paper also proposes relaxing the current advertising rules governing abortion services, or what BCAP refers to as ‘post-conception pregnancy advice services’. The aim of the proposed new rule is: ‘(1) to allow post-conception pregnancy advice services the freedom to advertise, and (2) to ensure that advertisements for those services make clear whether the service refers women for abortion.’

In his comment to the press, Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells, stated:

‘The last thing children need is to see condoms advertised on prime time television and many parents will be alarmed at the prospect of having contraception and abortion thrust under the noses of their children during family viewing times.

‘If promoting contraception worked as a strategy for reducing teenage conceptions, you would expect abortion rates to come down. But they haven’t. The more we have promoted contraception among young people in schools, youth clubs and confidential clinics, the higher the teenage abortion rate has risen. The same is true of sexually transmitted infections.

‘It is a myth to say that using a condom makes sex safe. As many have found to their cost, the effectiveness of condoms is limited and they offer very little protection at all against some infections – especially against HPV which can lead to cervical cancer. The only way to be safe is to keep sexual intimacy within the context of a lifelong, mutually faithful relationship with an uninfected partner. In short, the real need is not to normalise condom use, but to normalise keeping sex within marriage.

‘Advertising condoms and abortion advice services at a time when more children are in the television audience will do nothing to reduce teenage conceptions or sexually transmitted infections. It will rather have the effect of encouraging yet more sexual experimentation among young people by giving them the false impression that they can engage in casual sexual relationships without consequences. The only people who would stand to gain from any relaxation of restrictions would be the condom manufacturers and abortion providers.’

How to respond

The closing date for responses to the consultation is 19 June 2009. BCAP have stated a strong preference for receiving responses as email attachments in Microsoft Word format sent to BCAPcodereview@cap.org.uk However, they are also prepared to accept responses by fax (+44 (0)20 7404 3404), or by post, sent to BCAP Code Review, Code Policy Team, Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, London WC1V 6QT.

You do not have to respond to all of the consultation questions, but may select the one(s) of particular interest and concern to you. For example, Question 147 asks:

Do you agree that television advertisements for condoms should be relaxed from its present restriction and not be advertised in or adjacent to programmes commissioned for, principally directed at or likely to appeal particularly to children below the age of 10? If your answer is no, please explain why.

Responses to the proposals with regard to abortion services are invited in Question 62.

The BCAP Code Review – Consultation on the proposed BCAP Broadcast Advertising Standards Code http://www.asa.org.uk/cap/Consultations

 

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Government welfare plans offer incentives to family breakdown

In its Welfare Reform white paper published in December, the government confirmed its plans to disregard any child maintenance payments received by lone parents when calculating their entitlement to income-related benefits.

Following changes to the welfare system in October 2008, maintenance payments are already fully disregarded when calculating lone parent entitlement to housing benefit and council tax benefit, and £20 per week is disregarded for the purposes of applications for other income-related benefits. However, from April 2010, the government intends to go further and totally disregard all maintenance payments received from a former spouse or partner when calculating benefit entitlement. According to the white paper:

‘Our changes to the maintenance disregard will mean that lone parents on benefits who are in receipt of child maintenance will be better off, lifting many of them out of poverty.’

However, the proposed changes will also mean that the estranged wife of a wealthy businessman or sports personality will be able to receive tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds in child maintenance without it affecting her entitlement to further support from the taxpayer in the form of income support, housing benefit, council tax benefit and any other income-related benefit to which she may be entitled.

The white paper claims that the proposal will give parents a ‘positive incentive’ to make and keep a maintenance arrangement. What it does not consider, however, is that the proposal is likely to offer a positive incentive for couples to live apart and neither make nor keep a commitment to lifelong marriage.

Department for Work and Pensions, Raising expectations and increasing support: reforming welfare for the future, December 2008 http://www.dwp.gov.uk/welfarereform/raisingexpectations/fullversion.pdf

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Database State

Eleven public-sector databases, including ContactPoint and the electronic Common Assessment Framework, are almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned, according to a report published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. A further 29 databases were found to have serious problems with the possibility that they might be unlawful, including the National Pupil Database and the National Child Obesity Database. In the view of the researchers, of the 46 databases assessed only six had a proper legal basis for any privacy intrusions and were proportionate and necessary in a democratic society.

In what is regarded as the most comprehensive map so far of Britain’s database state, the report systematically assesses each database by department:

  • Department of Health (9 databases)
  • Department for Children, Schools & Families (6)
  • Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills (1)
  • Home Office (7)
  • Ministry of Justice (1)
  • Treasury (1)
  • Department for Work & Pensions (5)
  • Department for Transport (5)
  • Non-departmental agencies (3)
  • Local government (5)
  • European databases (3)

Privacy International, the human rights watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations, ranks Britain as the most invasive surveillance state and the worst at protecting individual privacy of any Western democracy. Database State observes: ‘We have been moving from a world in which departments had to take a positive decision to collect data, to one where they have to take a positive decision not to.’

Although the Prime Minister has acknowledged that the government ‘cannot promise that every single item of information will always be safe’, the report notes that ‘ministers remain intent on building increasingly intrusive personalised services around more large centralised databases with a strong element of data sharing’. The result is that  ‘government departments have built systems that will radically change the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state’ and ‘all aspects of our lives will be surrounded by masses of data collected without our consent, and shared well beyond the purposes for which they were originally collected’.

The report concludes with a series of 10 recommendations with a view to both protecting privacy and human rights, and developing effective systems. The first recommendation states:

‘Government should compel the provision or sharing of sensitive personal data only for clearly defined purposes that are proportionate and necessary in a democratic society. Where consent is sought for further sharing, the consent must be fully informed and freely given.’

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Key databases with a focus on children

ContactPoint

ContactPoint is a national index of all children in England. When fully operational, it will hold each child’s name, address, gender and date of birth, contact details for parents, and information on the child’s education provider and primary health care team. It is intended to enable practitioners to see who else is working with a child, and will list the contact details for practitioners in any service with which the child is involved, together with any case record number by which the child is known to individual agencies.

Together with the Electronic Common Assessment Framework (see below), ContactPoint will provide a single point of reference that will enable agencies to monitor children and co-ordinate intervention if they believe a child is not making good progress towards the government’s five Every Child Matters outcomes.

Electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF)

Work is underway to develop a second national database to hold the records of all children who have been been deemed to need additional services over and above ‘universal’ education and health care and who have been assessed under the Common Assessment Framework (CAF). The CAF goes beyond recording factual information and includes practitioners’ subjective impressions of how the child is developing in his or her family. It also frequently records extensive data on the child’s family, including value judgments about parents and other family members.

Although the CAF can be completed on paper, it is being supplanted by the Electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF), a database that the government plans to make available from the autumn of 2009.

National Pupil Database

The National Pupil Database (NPD) holds data on every pupil in a state-maintained school and on younger children in nurseries or childcare if their places are funded by the local authority. It is principally used for statistical and research purposes, but is increasingly being used as a data source for other systems.

Pupil data is collected via a termly school census, and the data required are specified by the Secretary of State in regulations. The current dataset includes: name, age, address, ethnicity, special educational needs information, ‘gifted and talented’ indicators, free school meal entitlement, whether the child is in care, mode of travel to school, behaviour and attendance data. An annual ‘Early Years’ census collects data on pre-school children. The NPD also holds details of key stage and public examination results.

National Childhood Obesity Database

The National Childhood Obesity Database contains the results of height and weight measurements taken from school pupils in Year 1 (age 5–6) and Year 6 (10–11) since 2005. Parents can refuse to have their children weighed and measured, but currently around 80 per cent of children participate. The database is the largest of its kind in the world. Its aim is to provide local-level data to evaluate interventions and monitor government progress towards the target, set in 2004, to halt the rise in obesity among children under 11 by 2010.

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Patient teenagers:the ‘saved sex’ message makes a difference

by Dr Trevor Stammers

The Chief Medical Officer advocates total abstinence from alcohol for under-15s,1 but encouraging abstinence from underage sex is usually ridiculed in the UK. No surprise therefore that misleading headlines about a new study on US virginity pledges2 were universally along the lines of ‘Virginity pledge ineffective against teen sex despite government funding’.3 The study showed those who made an abstinence pledge were just as likely to have had sex at age 21 as those who had not pledged, and were less likely to have used condoms at first intercourse.

Recently however, the RAND Corporation found that virginity pledges did delay sexual intercourse and did not decrease condom use.4 Why then the differing findings? As so often, it all depends on the sampling. The RAND study included those as young as 12 and examined sexual experience one-to-three years later, whereas Rosenbaum only sampled over-15s and examined their sexual experience five years later when aged 21-23. Both studies carried out propensity score matching5 to try and eliminate variables other than pledging. This meant that both pledging and non-pledging samples were matched, for example, for religiosity.

Perhaps it is not surprising then that, at 21-23, Rosenbaum’s pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and anal and oral sex variables, since they all came from similar home backgrounds whether they pledged or not. What went largely unreported, however, was that both Rosenbaum groups had a lower likelihood of teen pregnancy; fewer friends who used drugs; and less pre-marital vaginal sex than US teenagers overall; and that the average age of first intercourse for both groups was 21 against the US average of 17.6

The Rosenbaum study then actually shows common factors in both matched groups that delay first intercourse by around four years, confirming many studies showing religion, family structure7 and parental attitudes to sex8 have a major influence on age of first coitus with no evidence of increased harm. STI rates were not statistically different at 5 per cent level even though they reported far less condom use. In fact the chlamydia rates were over 40 per cent lower in the pledging group. For Rosenbaum to conclude that ‘virginity pledge programmes do not prepare pledgers to protect their health if they have sex’ and for the UK media to propagate it, is yet another case of the blind leading the blind.

References

1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5607712.ece
2. Rosenbaum J,  Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers, Pediatrics Vol. 123 No. 1 January 2009, pp. e110-e120 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-0407).
3. Hopkins Tanne J, Virginity pledge ineffective against teen sex despite government funding, BMJ .2008; 337: a3168.
4. Martino SC, Elliott MN, Collins RL , Kanouse DE , Berry SH, Virginity Pledges Among the Willing: Delays in First Intercourse and Consistency of Condom Use, Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 43, Issue 4, October 2008, Pages 341-348.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propensity_score_matching
6. McGurn W,  Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex, Wall Street Journal Jan 6 2009 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120095259855597.html
7. Stammers T, Teenage pregnancies are influenced by family structure, BMJ 2004; 329: 174.
8. Stammers T, Sexual Health in Adolescents, BMJ 2007 334 103-4.

This article was published by the Christian Medical Fellowship in the Spring 2009 issue of Triple Helix and is reproduced here by kind permission.

 

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Government misses the point

It is not only the media that has swallowed the myth that abstinence education does not work. In response to a recent parliamentary question, the government minister, Beverley Hughes, asserted that ‘there is no evidence that education that promotes abstinence until marriage is effective’. In support of her claim, she cited the Rosenbaum study which is the subject of Dr Stammers’ article. Ms Hughes wrote:

‘Recent evidence from the United States shows that young people who pledged to abstain from sex until they were married had sexual behaviour in the next five years similar to that of teenagers who had not taken an abstinence pledge (Pediatrics 2009, doi:10.1542/peds.2009-0407). Teenagers who had pledged abstinence, and a matched control group who had not taken a pledge, did not differ in rates of premarital sex.’1

However, Beverley Hughes omitted to mention the fact that the majority of the young people in both groups studied had been brought up by religious parents and showed a high level of religious commitment themselves. They were therefore more likely to have received encouragement to save sex for marriage from their families, their religion, and from friends who shared their faith commitment, irrespective of whether they had made a specific pledge. Mrs Hughes also failed to note that both groups of young people were less likely to engage in sex during their teenage years than teenagers in the wider population who did not benefit from the same level of encouragement to save sex for marriage.

Note:
1. House of Commons Hansard, 9 March 2009, col 160W.

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Government to consult on PSHE

In response to pressure from Family Education Trust, the government has belatedly agreed that it will consult on the question of whether Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE), including sex and relationship education, should be made a statutory part of the curriculum.

In a letter to the Trust, the Minister, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, stated that there would be a full public consultation on PSHE running from late Spring to early Autumn. The consultation would contain three main components: (i) the recommendations of Sir Alasdair Macdonald’s independent review of PSHE; (ii) the proposals of Sir Jim Rose on the way in which PSHE should be covered in primary schools; and (iii) the changes to legislation that would be required to give effect to the government’s intention to make PSHE a statutory part of the curriculum.

Having previously declined to honour earlier ministerial commitments that any changes to the staus of PSHE would be subject to public consultation, the Minister stressed that the government would be ‘inviting views on the principle of whether PSHE should be made statutory’ as part of the forthcoming consultation. Sir Jim Rose and Sir Alasdair Macdonald are both due to publish their reports at the end of April, and it is anticipated that the consultation will be launched shortly thereafter.

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Healthy lives, brighter futures: The strategy for children and young people’s health

The failure of the teenage pregnancy strategy is driving the government to propose increasingly desperate measures that are likely to make matters worse rather than better. In its new health stategy document, Healthy lives, brighter futures, the government announced that it would be launching a new campaign to increase young people’s ‘knowledge and trust’ of effective contraceptive methods, and that financial incentives would be offered to GPs for giving advice on contraception.

Published jointly by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department of Health, the strategy pledged an increased investment of around £27 million per year to improve the access of young people to contraception. The document states:

‘Identified priorities for this funding include teenage pregnancy ‘hotspot areas’, and areas with high abortion and repeat abortion rates. We have made clear that this funding should be used to ensure that all young people have easy access to high quality contraception advice, including LARC [long-acting reversible contraception], and to improve training of health professionals in providing contraception.’

The government is continuing to invest in contraceptive services targeted at young people in spite of the fact that the more it has invested in schemes to promote contraception, the higher the teenage abortion and sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates have risen. The strategy document itself acknowledges that young people aged 16-24 account for nearly half of STIs diagnosed despite making up only 12 per cent of the population.

In addition to its new information campaign ‘aimed at increasing young people’s knowledge and trust in the full range of effective contraceptive methods’, the government will be calling on GPs to be more proactive in promoting contaceptives to young people:

‘From 2009-10 onwards, GPs will be given greater incentives, through the Quality and Outcomes Framework, to provide advice on sexual health – specifically advice on contraception, particularly long acting methods.’

Parents of girls under 16 will be alarmed to think that doctors are going to be given financial incentives to provide their daughters with contraception behind their backs. It is tantamount to bribing doctors to facilitate underage sex. Rather than waste yet more public money on encouraging young people to use contraception, it would make far more sense for the government to target its efforts at discouraging them from engaging in sexual activity in the first place.

Department for Children, Schools and Families, and Department of Health, Healthy lives, brighter futures: The strategy for children and young people’s health, Feb 2009 http://www.dh.gov.uk/

 

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Counting the cost of family breakdown

The direct cost of relationship breakdown in the UK amounts to an estimated £37 billion per year, according to the Relationships Foundation, while functioning families provide social care and support worth £73 billion per year and family businesses generate turnover in excess of £1 trillion.

The direct costs of family breakdown (in £bn)
Tax and Benefits
Tax credits

6.31

Lone parent benefit

4.34

£10.65bn
Housing

Housing and Council Tax Benefit

3.68
Emergency housing

0.11

£3.79bn
Health and Social Care

NHS

10.37

Children in care

2.04

£12.41bn
Civil and Criminal Justice

Police

3.94
Prisons

1.18
Court Service

0.50
Legal Aid

0.92
CSA (running costs)

0.52

£7.06bn

Education

£3.12bn

Direct costs

£37.03bn

Source: When Relationships Go Wrong, p.2.

However, the financial costs to society of family breakdown tell only part of the story, and the full costs are incalculable. As Relate has noted:

‘Family breakdown is a private tragedy but on a wider scale is also a matter for public concern. Looking at social and family policy questions across government shows that family breakdown contributes to a wide variety of social problems causing distress for individuals, families and communities.’1

In the light of the sober evidence contained in its reports, When Relationships Go Wrong and When Relationships Go Right, the Relationships Foundation recommends that policy makers and implementers should look for ways of reducing the cost of failure while supporting the main engines of success.

Note:
1. http://www.relate.org.uk/aboutus/relationshipsandsociety/

When Relationships Go Wrong: Counting the cost of family failure, and When Relationships Go Right: Enabling thriving lives, Relationships Foundation 2008 http://www.relationshipsfoundation.org/download.php?id=246

 

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The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education

Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes, Routledge 2009,
xviii + 182pp, £18.99, ISBN 978-0415397018

Recent years have seen a rapid rise in what has variously been termed ‘emotional literacy’ or ‘therapeutic education’. The authors of this important book speak in terms of a new orthodoxy that has gained currency in the thinking of policymakers and educators whereby ‘we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, emotionally fragile and vulnerable and, as a consequence, we need particular forms of emotional support’.

The government considers ‘the social and emotional aspects of learning’ (SEAL) to be ‘key to a successful curriculum’, and introduced the SEAL programme to primary schools in 2005 and to secondary schools in 2007.1 Data collected in July 2008 by National Strategies showed that about 80 per cent of primary schools and about 30 per cent of secondary schools have already implemented a SEAL programme, and the Department for Children, Schools and Families anticipates that by July 2009 around 90 per cent of primary schools and 45 per cent of secondary schools will have introduced SEAL.2

In eight well-reasoned chapters, Professors Ecclestone and Hayes trace the growth of therapeutic education and training from the Early Years Curriculum, through primary and secondary education, and on into further education colleges, universities and workplaces. They show how the emergence of ‘emotional well-being’ into political and professional thinking ‘moves mental health work from a marginal activity into mainstream education and welfare services’ and subject it to a penetrating critique.

Anti-educational

There is no question that there has been a discernable shift away from the intellectual and towards the emotional in Britain’s schools. While Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Citizenship lessons have had a vital part to play in promoting ‘emotional literacy’, the government, Ofsted, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority are keen to see all subject areas used imaginatively to develop SEAL. In the view of Ecclestone and Hayes, subject disciplines are being dismantled in order to fit them for use as vehicles for the latest manifestation of social engineering.

Noting that the university is often the source of therapeutic ideas and provides the intellectual framework for them, the authors contend that: ‘The growing emphasis on emotions in the academy says much about the widespread withdrawal from intellectual and public life into relativism, subjectivity and feelings.’ With regard to education in primary and secondary schools, they warn:

‘Lack of a confident, inspiring vision for education creates a vacuum into which a plethora of instrumental attributes, skills, values and dispositions can be inserted, alongside every latest political fad or whim. It is very likely that therapeutic education will quickly accommodate the idea that the search for “true sources of satisfaction” should be the core value of schooling, where the overarching question is “Are the children happy?”’

Unhealthy introspection

The emphasis on often ill-defined concepts such as ‘emotional literacy’, ‘emotional intelligence’, ‘emotional well-being’ and ‘self-esteem’ has encouraged a preoccupation with self which in turn has had a paralysing effect on human initiative and enterprise. Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes argue that ‘therapeutic education is turning children, young people and adults into anxious and self-preoccupied individuals rather than aspiring, optimistic and resilient learners’ with a desire to pursue truth, master a difficult subject or learn a new skill.

In the context of an analysis of the Anglo-American philosophical, cultural and sociological shift towards a therapy culture, the authors suggest that a ‘universal individual self-absorption’ seems to have filled the vacuum left by the decline of religion, but the fruits of this shift have not been positive. They note American research which shows that giving attention to the assumed problems of self-esteem has led to narcissm, depression and lower educational standards. They write:

‘[Therapeutic education] erodes the idea of human beings as conscious agents who realise their potential for individual and social change through projects to transform themselves and their world and replaces it witha narrow, introspective view of what it means to be human.’

Intrusive

Above all, Ecclestone and Hayes assert that therapeutic education is ‘profoundly dangerous because a diminished image of human potential opens up people’s emotions to assessment by the state and encourages dependence on ritualised forms of emotional support offered by state agencies’. They argue that policy makers have embraced popular therapy so warmly precisely because it enables ‘the state to show that it is uniquely placed to respond to popular concerns and to develop people’s emotional resources’.

‘Old forms of support’ such as family, friends, churches, and other community groups are no longer viewed as reliable sources of help, and families tend to be treated with particular suspicion and are frequently regarded as part of the problem rather than the solution. As an example of how parents are undermined by embedding ‘social and emotional aspects of learning’ into the curriculum, reference is made to the introduction of a ‘feelings tree’ in primary school. The purpose is ostensibly to encourage children to articulate their emotions, yet more ominously staff testify to its usefulness in enabling them to ‘dig into the home lives of the children’.

The authors warn that ‘the institutionalisation of a therapeutic ethos has always had a distinctly authoritarian aspect’, but the particular danger inherent in the current rise in therapeutic education is that it is not overt, but very subtle. That being the case, we are all the more indebted to Professors Ecclestone and Hayes for lifting the lid on one of the most dangerous developments facing our schools and the wider culture. Parents, teachers and policy makers alike would do well to heed the message of this book and start asking some uncomfortable questions.

Notes
1. HL Hansard, 3 February 2009, col 550.
2. HC Hansard, 15 January 2009, col 937W.

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‘Don’t teach your children the difference between right and wrong,’ government tells parents

Parents should not teach their children that there are any rights and wrongs when it comes to sex and relationships, according to a new government leaflet, The advice, drafted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and approved by ministers, is being distributed through local pharmacies.

Talking to your teenager about sex and relationships tells parents that their children need to know about contraception; sexually transmitted infections (STIs); gay, lesbian and bi-sexual teenagers; and alcohol and drugs; but warns parents that teaching their children that anything is right or wrong will be counterproductive. While parents may discuss their ‘values’ with their teenage children, they are urged to:

‘Remember though, that trying to convince them of what’s right and wrong may discourage them from being open. Try to keep the discussion light, encourage them to say what they think and reassure them that you trust them to make the right decisions.’

‘Right decisions’

There are several references to ‘right decisions’ and ‘right choices’, but they are only ever defined in connection with using contraception – what the leaflet inaccurately describes as ‘safe sex’. The message communicated is that there is nothing wrong about any kind of sexual relationship in principle, so long as contraception is used.

The fpa (Family Planning Association), Brook and Stonewall are recommended as sources of further help and advice. For ‘detailed information on STIs and how to stay protected’, parents are encouraged to direct their teenagers to the NHS-funded website www.condomessentialwear.co.uk where teenagers are promised: ‘This site has all you need to know to keep healthy, stay safe and make condoms a fun and essential part of your sex life.’ The leaflet contains not a single mention of marriage, lifelong commitment, or even of love.

Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells, commented:

‘In the name of non-judgmentalism, the government is abandoning young people to the shifting sands of relativism and depriving them of the moral compass they so desperately need. Given the misery that so often flows from casual relationships, the best advice parents can give their children is to avoid forming an exclusive friendship with someone from the opposite sex until they are in a position to seriously consider getting married.

‘What young people really need from their parents is not more talk about the mechanics of sex and contraception, but encouragement to develop the character qualities of stability, faithfulness and commitment – the qualities they will need in order to build strong and lasting relationships based on something that runs deeper than feelings and physical attraction. And that is done primarily by example.’

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The failure of the teenage pregnancy strategy

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics at the end of February showed a 2.7 per cent increase in the under-18 conception rate in 2007. This is the largest change in either direction since 1999, taking the annual teenage conception rate to its highest level since 2003. The under-16 conception rate saw an even larger rise of 7.8 per cent, taking the under 16 figure to a slightly higher level than when the teenage pregnancy strategy was first announced in 1999.

A year ago, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) cited South Tyneside as an example of what could be achieved by fully implementing the teenage pregnancy strategy. The latest figures, however, show a massive 37.5 per cent rise in South Tyneside in 2007, with the result that the area now has its highest teenage conception rates since 2000.

http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk

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Kathleen Cassidy

We are sorry to report the death of Kathleen Cassidy on 3 February. Kathleen was a faithful and enthusiastic pro-life and family campaigner, who devoted an immense amount of her time to researching and writing on family-related issues. Literally scores of letters streamed from her computer to MPs, ministers, government departments and letters editors of both national and local newspapers. Her letters were always thoroughly researched, well-reasoned and persuasively written, and it is testimony to her diligence and perseverance that her last letter for publication was written and submitted just a matter of days before she died.

In 2005 she received the Family Life Award in recognition of her initiative, courage, and dedication in support of the family. Her passing represents a great loss not only to her own family and friends but also to the pro-family cause, and underscores the need for others to take up the baton.

For a number of years Kathleen faithfully assisted with mailings at the Family and Youth Concern office several times a year, and always arrived armed with leaflets, cuttings and research material. She will be sorely missed.

We extend our heartfelt sympathy to her husband, three children and seven grandchildren.

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