Harry Benson runs Bristol Community Family Trust, a local charity that is pioneering short relationship courses that teach couples how to stay together, and was deputy chair of the family policy group that produced Fractured Families and Breakthrough Britain.
On Thursday I went to the high profile DCSF “relationship summit” introduced by Ed Balls, Beverley Hughes and PM’s wife Sarah Brown. The one day conference was a response to the “Kids in the middle” campaign, about the need to support children and parents experiencing problems, separation and family breakdown.
DCSF have launched an accompanying paper Families in Britain: an evidence paper, which the Daily Mail was quick to pounce on as “Labour finally admits married parents are better for children”. Not surprisingly, much of the content and conclusions of both paper and conference mirrors the analysis and conclusions reached by the various CSJ family reports, produced by Dr Samantha Callan who attended the day with me. However there are also fundamental differences.
The relationship summit made lots of good noises. And whatever preconceived notion I might have had from his media exposure, Ed Balls spoke extremely well about his personal experience of family life and about the importance of both prevention and support.
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