IDS should champion marriage, not relationship counselling
by Harry Benson, TCW:
Former welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith has warned the government not to cut the annual £7.5million funding for relationship counselling. But is he right?
I’ve been researching and writing about what works in relationships for nearly 20 years, so you might think I’d agree with IDS that this is an issue worth championing. Instead I’m indifferent about it.
First, there’s not much convincing evidence that relationship counselling is as effective its advocates claim. Although many couples seem to do better after therapy, it’s not obvious than any type of therapy performs better than any other. I was an adviser to a recent Department for Education study that analysed UK couple therapy. I eventually withdrew because of a blanket refusal to include a control group for comparison, as well as lack of clarity about what therapy actually involved. This is the study that claims £1 of input saves £11 of costs. Maybe it does, but the study doesn’t prove it. I tell couples in trouble to talk to wise friends.
Second, therapy is never going to solve much of the problem of breakdown. We should focus on how to prevent couples from getting into trouble in the first place.
Third, compared to the giant £48 billion we spend on family breakdown, a puny £7.5 million is a drop in the ocean. Alas, to mix metaphors, this money gives politicians a figleaf with which to pretend they are doing something. They are not.
The sheer scale of the problem is huge. Nearly half of all teenagers today are not living with both parents. That means one in every two couples are splitting up between conceiving their children and getting them through GCSEs. This is an astonishingly high failure rate, and puts the UK at the top of the family breakdown league in the entire developing world.
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