You are browsing the Blog for Separation.

How do we keep relationships alive when children come along?

January 30, 2012 in Relationships, Separation, Services

Family separation affects children in many ways, some that are not readily apparent until later in life when children become parents themselves.  In the UK, where the divorce and separation rate remains high, perhaps its time to change the way we help families to deal with the aftermath of separation.

The children who do best after separation are those whose parents can disentangle the ending of their adult relationship from their ongoing parenting relationship.  This ability to continue to parent together provides for children the continuity and certainty of a close relationship with mum and dad, which in turn provides the foundation for successful adult relationships in the future.  But too many parents who are separating find themselves so caught up in their own pain and suffering that their children’s needs are simply overlooked.

To makes things worse the support  that is available to separating parents is often responsible for increasing the conflict between them.  Many organisations encourage the notion that one parent has control over the children, viewing the other as an optional extra, or argue that both parents should have equal rights to their children’s time. Neither of these approaches help parents to work together to give their children the love, care and support that is so essential to their well being.

We  should instead set an expectation that both parents will continue to be fully involved in their children’s lives after separation and invest in services to support that.  These services should not just be about reducing conflict but about helping children to feel secure in a model of close, positive parenting that they will be able to draw upon when they become parents themselves.

Services to support the rebuilding of parenting partnerships are delivered widely in other countries (for example Australia) but remain rare and underfunded in the UK.  The Centre for Separated Families offers support to both parents at the point of separation and beyond, helping separated mums and dads to build better relationships.  This approach is not a quick fix. But the investment is worth it because the research shows that  when parents can rebuild a working partnership their children will benefit for the rest of their lives.

We believe that the time has come to move from focusing upon adult rights to supporting parental responsibilities, and to invest in more services that reorientate parents towards the needs of their children. It is time for those who develop policy to think differently about what is really needed for children.  This is not just about helping children now, but about investing in the future.

Tags: , , ,
No Comments »

What do you think Kids in the Middle should campaign for?

January 30, 2012 in Family, Separation

Kids In The Middle is about helping children who get caught up in relationship problems at home and about helping parents to avoid these problems in the first place.

With 25 Agony Aunts and Uncles backing the campaign, and a coalition of 24 national organisations teaming up to make change happen, Kids in the Middle can think big. What do you think Kids in the Middle should campaign for?

The members of the campaign have had a discussion about this and our ideas are below.  We now want to hear from you about your thoughts.  You may be a child, or a mother or father or other member of a family, or someone who has had a good or a bad experience of a family service.  You might be someone who works for an organisation that helps children and families.

(This is a discussion about campaigns and we cannot answer personal enquiries.  If you have those, why not try one of the Agony Aunts and Uncles listed in the “about us” section?  You can contact them through their newspapers and magazines.)

We will join in the discussion so if you have questions, please ask them.  If you want to follow what we do, please subscribe to this website – we will keep telling you what we are up to on this website.

So, our ideas so far……

Supporting children whose parents are fighting

Some time ago I watched a charming and strikingly communicative child change completely when her parents went through a pretty messy divorce.  What was most worrying was how conflict and anxieties spread around the child’s circle of friends, only resolved (for the friends) when the child suddenly moved out of the school.  The school did its best, but this was clearly beyond what the teachers had the capacity and time to deal with. This child needed help – particularly help to keep her friendships intact through the turmoil at home.  It was actually this situation that first made me think that we need a new service, perhaps a helpline or counselling that is specifically promoted in schools and is promoted to children who are having trouble at home.

So we are thinking about two ideas.  First something like an Agony Aunt or Uncle for school children, that they could write to or email.  There are some organisations that provide this help already, but no-one that is so well known that most children all over the country know about him or her when people are fighting at home.  We also think that every school in England should have a counsellor – someone that children in trouble can speak to privately.  In Wales, all schools must have a counsellor – why not in the rest of the UK?

In some families there is violence, and some children end up having to move out of the home and away from their school because of it.  We think children subjected to violence in their own home deserve a LOT of help and more than they get now.

For parents who are separating or divorcing, we think there need to be better services that help both mum and dad to deal with their extreme upset, to help them rebuild their roles as mum and dad separately instead of together.  We don’t think the child’s point of view is taken seriously enough in many cases – not because people don’t think that children are important, but because the systems we have just make it really difficult to hear the children.

We think family and children’s services should give more support and better support to parents who are fighting a lot and also support to parents who are parenting apart from each other.  We also think there needs to be more support on-line, so parents have immediate access to help when they are worried, even in the middle of the night!

Supporting family relationships – before things go wrong

We think much more attention should be given to how parents get along and how this affects children, starting at the birth.  We think maternity services need to do more to work with both parents together when a baby is born, helping them to work together and to cope with the massive change a baby makes to the relationship between them.

We think that all children’s services and family services should be able to give parents relationship support – we need to work hard to make it feel “OK” for parents to ask for such help.

We also think schools should teach more about social and emotional issues, because these are so fundamental to everyone’s happiness and success.  We don’t think this is given very much priority, given how important it is.

Tags: , , , ,
No Comments »

Kids’ Turn – evidence based, innovative divorce education programmes in the USA

January 30, 2012 in Separation, Services

Kids’ Turn in San Francisco was founded in 1988.  It was one of the first programmes in the United States offering educational services to children and parents that help children get through the emotional storms of parental separation or divorce.
Kids’ Turn is a leader in this  field in the US.  We are different from other divorce programmes:

  • simultaneous attendance by children (ages 5-17) and parents
  • a six week commitment to a workshop
  • service delivery in three languages – English, Spanish and Chinese.

Since 1988, we have served 17,000 parents and children in the San Francisco Bay Area, and that figure does not include the affiliate locations around the country and international partners who have purchased our curriculum.

Kids’ Turn is now evidence based, following the recent publication of a longitudinal study by Dr. Jeffrey Cookston  at San Francisco State University.  Dr. Cookston’s study took four years and the remarkable outcomes speak to the efficacy of Kids’ Turn programmes:

  • Reduction in parent conflict
  • Reduction in parental alienation
  • Reduction in internalisation of negative behaviours by children.

Most recently, Kids’ Turn has undertaken a revision of its curriculum to include elements of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) developed by Dr. Daniel Goleman in the 1990s.  EQ promotes the importance of each individual’s ability to manage complex emotions in any relationship.
The revised programmes encourage children and parents, using age appropriate methodology, to:

  • Identify their emotions
  • Manage their emotions
  • Affirm a motivation for emotional regulation
  • Identify  emotions in others
  • Manage relationships based on the ability to identify emotions.

The revised programmes are being tested now in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the feedback we are receiving from participants is very positive.

For more, visit www.kidsturn.org.

Tags: ,
No Comments »