The case for family-centred policy

Jul 20, 2022 by

by Rakib Ehsan, Artillery Row:

Whilst the Conservative Party leadership contest has all too often descended into a tax-cutting arms race and unedifying cheap shots, there are actors in British civil society who concentrate on tackling the root causes of many of the social and economic ills we see today.

At the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), we take this problem very seriously. Our organisation’s new report, Repairing our society: A social justice manifesto for a thriving Britain, provides those in government with a clear message: it is time to restore the family unit to the heart of social policy.

In an age where there is a cultural obsession with placing “protected characteristics” such as race and ethnicity at the centre of debates about social and economic disadvantage, we believe that this report represents a timely and much-needed intervention.

Passionately defending the family unit, and alluding to what British academic Dr Tony Sewell once referred to as Britain’s “fatherlessness epidemic”, Repairing our society says:

Family is the bedrock of our society. And yet the rate of marriage is at its lowest level since records began, according to the Office for National Statistics. This is despite overwhelming evidence showing that stable, two-parent families provide the best start in life for children. Half (49 per cent) of lone parent families are in relative income poverty — many children in this country are experiencing the impact of “Dad deprivation”.

The figures speak for themselves when it comes to the decline of family stability in Britain over the last half a century or so. In 1971, the UK had 570,000 one-parent families — 50 years on, in 2021, this figure reached 3 million (which accounted for 15.4 per cent of families in the UK, rising up to 17.8 per cent in North East England).

Read here

 

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