Partners News No 7 - April 2001
By Dave Percival
Marriage and the Government
The presence of William Hague and a junior minister from LCD at the NMW launch reflects a continuing political interest in issues around marriage. The Conservatives have promised to promote marriage and strengthen all families if they are elected. The present government through the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor's department continues to fund marriage and family-based projects, although their promised white paper on families due in February has been held back until after the election.
We understand that the LCD has begun it's long promised update of its Directory of Marriage Support Services. They declined 2-in-2-1's offer to help them to do this free of charge!! On a similar vein, the National Family and Parenting Institute is still calling for organisations to register on their Parent Services Directory.
We were also intrigued to read that the LCD were going to fund www.2as1.net but as yet haven't been able to find any information on what the venture is - do any of you know anything about it?? If so, do please let us know!
Funding from Government
Community Marriage Policies, which started with a pilot in Taunton, continue to expand their work to bring together local people to work together to support marriage and family life. They have recently benefitted from an LCD grant to support their work in three separate areas. A further grant from the Jerusalem Trust will help train mentor couples to support couples planning marriage and through into the early years of married life.
Family Matters Institute have recently received a grant from the Home Office to promote networking, partnership and training in delivering parenting and family communication skills. While this may not have a direct impact on marriage, support networking and partnerships established locally and nationally may well facilitate marriage support work too.
Both groups aim to work with registrars as well as churches to ensure good preparation of couples for marriage. On the Christian front, Churches Together for Families are targetting ministers in the church with their leaflets and website (coming on stream at the end of April), www.marriage-preparation.co.uk, in an effort to promote more effective preparation of couples who marry in church.
