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Kids in the Middle campaign
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October 2008
We meet the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Along with 18 Agony Aunts, we met Ed Balls on 2oth October to press for more support for separated parents and their children. As a result of the meeting, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has agreed to hold a relationship ‘summit' and has asked the Agony Aunts, led by Deidre Sanders of The Sun to keep him and his Department up to the mark on the issue. He has asked his officials to come up with definite and significant plans to improve services for separated families. Watch this space!
Deidre Sanders has also published her own guide leaflet Kids in the Middle - a guide for parting parents and their children. You can download it from The Sun's website at www.thesun.co.uk/kidsinthemiddle - Kids in the Middle survey and our proposals for action
On 20th October, we published the results of a national online survey of over 1,500 parents and children, giving their experiences and views of separation, and the help they would have liked. See (link to PDF policy document Kids in the Middle:Managing conflict, Rethinking support) for the survey results and our proposals for action - agreed by all four charities. - What is Kids in the Middle?
Each year between 150,000 and 200,000 parental couples separate. One in three children are affected by parental separation before they reach the age of 16. Sometimes separation is the right thing for parents to do, but when it is badly handled children can experience confusion and despair. And although most separating parents want to do the best for their children, the children's needs can be overlooked in their parents' emotional turmoil and distress. The problem is not so much bad parents, as parents going through a bad time - which many had not expected and are not prepared for. The result can be children caught in the middle of their parents' conflict - with long-term consequences for both children and parents.
Kids in the Middle is a national campaign launched by a partnership of family and parenting charities - Relate, One Parent Families|Gingerbread, Families Need Fathers and the Fatherhood Institute - to help tackle the lack of support for children and parents trapped in the misery and turmoil of family breakdown. The campaign is backed by twenty of the country's leading agony aunts and uncles, who have come together to call on Government and relevant agencies to put children's interests at the top of the agenda when it comes to funding, designing and delivering key services for families at risk of separation or experiencing separation and its aftermath.
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