A new report by research agency IFF into the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Reducing Parental Conflict programme, shows how the Government continued to support thousands of parents experiencing relationship distress before, during and after the national coronavirus lockdown.
The programme, which encourages local authorities across England to integrate services and approaches to address parental conflict in their local provision for families, was awarded further investment from the Chancellor Rishi Sunak until 2025.
The reports, published this week, evaluate the effectiveness of both the DWP’s Reducing Parental Conflict programme and the second phase of its £2.8m Reducing Parental Conflict Challenge Fund – a grant given to organisations to test what works to reduce parental conflict.
The report on the Challenge Fund details how digital support resources were used over 30,000 times between April 2019 and December 2020, which included videos showing parental conflict from a child’s point of view, a parental relationship course optimised for mobile use and a check-in text support service. The Challenge Fund’s digital options focused on supporting low-income families and engaging specific target groups such as those affected by substance misuse, those leaving prison and those facing new parenthood.
Positive feedback from some of the parents after being supported through the Challenge Fund include:
One parent said, ‘…….it’s helped me, again, believe in myself and believe that I am still a dad and I am still here for [my child], just not at the moment, and it’s given me a little bit of self-belief back that I’m not useless and I was a good dad to her while I was there and I’m still her father…’.
Another said, ‘It’s not an easy thing to do, but I think it really helps, put the children back in the centre of what's needed and it takes the heat away from being about a relationship between two adults and more about a collaboration between two parents.’
- For more on the Reducing Parental Conflict programme read our exclusive comment piece from DWP minister Baroness Stedman-Scott.