Supporting Couples Create Better Life Chances for Children

[Dr ali ahmad]

LONDON: Evidence shows that supporting couples are more likely to improve their children’s life chances.

The critical importance of parenting, relationship support, and a child’s early years and character development cannot be ignored– areas where we face real challenges.

A report recently published in the UK reveals how children perceive parents’ relationships and conflicts determines how they expect their parents to behave towards them, and this in turn can result into psychological distress.

Evidence shows that early intervention can have a positive impact on parental relationships and improve outcomes for children. Providing support for parents as a couple, as well as for their relationships with their offspring is, therefore, needed.

Those working in children’s services agree – 92% of respondents to a snapshot survey think inter-parental relationships are very important to children’s outcomes, and 86% believe supporting inter-parental relationships should be a high priority for local early-intervention services.

Yet only 21% say supporting inter-parental relationships is a high priority in their area. There are many reasons for this: supporting the couple’s relationship (whether they are together or apart) is not seen as part of the job of frontline professionals; relationship support is usually available only where there is a risk of domestic violence, not as a preventive tool;

the split between adult and children’s services can mitigate against a whole-family approach. Current funding pressures also make it very difficult to test the impact of new services.

So although we seem to know that the relationship between parents is important, not enough of us are making this the priority we believe it should be.

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Dr Ali Ahmad
Email : [email protected]
18 April 2016