A Manifesto for Scotland's Families

• All families have the right to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.
  

• All families have the right to define and shape their own family structure.

• All family members have the right of access to information.

• All families have the right to services and support which are accessible and affordable at the earliest point of need.

• All families have the right to equal access to services and support regardless of ability or disability, race and ethnic background, gender, marital status, age, sexual orientation, political, religious and other beliefs, economic or other status.

• All family members have the right to be consulted and listened to by service providers, policy makers, advisors and public representatives on issues which impact on family life.

• All families have the right to live within a fully inclusive statutory framework.

• All families with caring responsibilities have the right to be valued equally, whether caring for children or adults.

Organisations Supporting this Manifesto...

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Family Values

The organisations promoting this manifesto believe that family policy in Scotland should be founded on a holistic approach which values all individuals in whatever family form, or at whatever stage in the life course. The definition of family should be seen as fulfilling personal relationships as well as society's needs, both of which include the nurturing of children and the care of older people.

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Why this matters: the composition of Scotland's Families

Married couples

There are 998,743 married couple families in Scotland.
(Source 2001 Census, Table 4. This and all the following statistics include families with no dependent children)

Cohabiting Heterosexual Couples

There are 160,153 cohabiting families in Scotland.
(Source 2001 Census, Table 4)

Cohabiting Same Sex couples

There are around 3,300 same sex cohabiting couples in Scotland.
(Source 2001 Census, Table 4)

Divorce and Separation

In 2001 there were 287,236 divorced people in Scotland and 146,203 people who were separated but still legally married. These figures do not include people whose cohabiting relationship had ended.
(Source 2001 Census, Table 2)

Lone Parent Families

There are 260,138 lone parent families in Scotland.
(Source 2001 Census, Table 4)

Stepfamilies

40% of all marriages are remarriages, compared to 14% in the 1960's. In 1991 it was projected that there were 40,000 (married) stepfamilies in Scotland involving around 160,000 children and young people. Figures for cohabiting stepfamilies are not available. 20% of grandparents under 60 are stepgrandparents.
(Source GHS, 2001 Census figures are not yet available for stepfamilies)

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What our Family Policy means in Practice

Support to children and family support: Statutory and voluntary agencies such as family support agencies, health visitors, social workers and teachers need to be aware of and sensitive to the variety of family situations for the children with whom they work and where support is being provided involve all family members relevant to the child. Currently contacts may be limited to the parent with care and meetings are frequently only held during the working day when it may be difficult and costly for a working parent to attend.

Accessible and affordable services: Family services for families with older children need to be developed to complement the existing programmes for very young children subject to disadvantage. Resourced and promoted specialist services such as freely available helplines which enable family members to seek help at an early stage without feeling stigmatised should form part of co-ordinated family services. Examples of universal services from other countries such as Australia and New Zealand should be examined.

Recognition of caring responsibilities: There is a growing need to recognise the care responsibilities which families have for adults since 11% of employees are carers.

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Progress so far

Legal inequalities between families: Some progress has been made in eliminating legal discrimination between different families. For example:

• Progress made: The Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 have extended the protection given in law to unmarried couples to include same sex couples.
• Legal inequality remaining: In England unmarried and same sex couples can now apply jointly for consideration as adoptive parents, but in Scotland only one parent in a same sex couple or an unmarried couple can adopt. A partner of a lesbian mother can only obtain parental rights and responsibilities in relation to their children by taking court action. Only one such order has been granted in Scotland. Same sex couples are also disadvantaged with regard to fostering regulations, private sector tenancy succession, domestic abuse protections and damages from a person causing the death of a partner.
• Unmarried fathers and stepparents: Still have no parental responsibilities and rights. Unmarried fathers may enter into a formal agreement with the mother or they have taken court action to obtain responsibilities and rights Stepparents can only seek a special order from the courts.

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Positive examples of inclusive approaches

Minority ethnic families: The Scottish Parenting Forum has produced a Resource Guide for organisations supporting these families in Scotland. Scottish Marriage Care has trained a group of minority ethnic groups in specialist relationship counselling for use within their community.

Fathers: One Parent Families Scotland has a Dads worker supporting lone and contact fathers with young children in Edinburgh and offers training to other agencies on working with fathers.

Disability: Capability Scotland and Children in Scotland have developed a Parents as Educators Project with European funding to promote to professionals the role of parents as educators and experts and to empower parents to be educators for other parents.

Same sex families: An Edinburgh Primary school was approached by a lesbian parent and agreed to purchase books featuring lesbian families for the school library. The City also requires incidents of homophobic bullying to be recorded and reported by all schools.

National Carers Strategy: The National Carers Strategy: Caring About Scotland is a welcome development here, with its injection of funding for services for carers with a requirement for Carers Groups to be involved in planning of services. The Scottish Executive is also providing information and support to their own staff who are carers and discussing the promotion of carer friendly policies with Scottish business.

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