Community Family Trusts

Bedford Community Family Trust (BCFT) is a non-profit charity set up in 2002 to reverse the tide of family breakdown through the provision of ongoing relationship education and mentor-based support.

If you're outside Bedford and want to get involved
Our National Association (NACFT) website will put you in touch with other CFTs around the UK. And if you can't find one near you, NACFT will help you get one going. The website includes a superb handbook that tells you how it all works.

National Relationships Conference (1MB pdf brochure)
Held in London in February. The previous conferences were fantastic. You'll be inspired.

Mentoring Marriages
Harry Benson's new book is the first in the UK on couple mentoring, the innovative and hopeful new approach used by BCFT to strengthen and support the relationship of young couples. Mentoring Marriages explains how couple-to-couple mentoring works and includes a full description of the highly effective yet simple practical skills taught on BCFT's state-of-the-art relationship courses. The book concludes with a comprehensive overview of the research case for marriage, marriage education and mentoring. Mentoring Marriages is available from Amazon and most bookshops, priced at £7.99.

How do we know what to teach?
Relationship research since 1990 allows us to be really confident what we should be teaching couples that will make a difference. It turns out that the way couples handle their issues and behaviour today acts as a signpost towards future relationship success or failure many years later. If we know the relevant issues and behaviour, then we know what to teach.

Does relationship education actually work?
Practitioners in the field need no convincing. Marriage and relationships are brilliant. Lives are changed. Feedback is wonderful. But, looked at more objectively, do courses actually work as well as we would like to believe? Top quality research studies are a bit thin on the ground. The answer is a qualified yes

Community Family Trusts - Who are we?

What is our aim?

Our mission statement says this: Bedford Community Family Trust aims to reduce family breakdown in Bedford by strengthening and building confident and committed relationships within families through the provision of ongoing relationship education and mentor-based support.

Why are we doing it?

• Family breakdown is endemic in the UK and rising.
• Two out of every five marriages will end in divorce.The trend away from marriage has created even more instability. Three quarters of all family breakdown affecting young children now involves parents who did not marry. (See our research and front page news coverage) Even when factors like poverty and age are taken into account, unmarried parents are still at least twice as likely to break up.
• Although most children from lone parents homes generally do OK, they are exposed to higher risks across the board. The consequences are dire. Children not living with both married parents face roughly twice the risk of:

• Poverty Emotional & psychological problems
• Failure at school
• Committing crime
• Exposure to abuse or domestic violence
• Becoming teen parents, Committing suicide
• Dying as an infant
• Dying younger as adults
• Cohabiting
• Divorcing

• The direct cost to the government of family breakdown is at least £15bn per year. This equates to 1/4 of the entire NHS bill. The average taxpayer contributes £570 every year, most of which pays for the costs of single parent welfare. In contrast, the government spends just 21p of taxpayer money to stop things getting worse. One quarter of all UK children now live in single parent families, by far the highest proportion in Europe. As our children grow up to form their own adult relationships, they have less and less of an idea what a healthy marriage or adult relationship looks like. Yet almost all couples aspire to one.

What works?

• BCFT draws on research into what works.
• We know what to teach. The factors that predict successful and unsuccessful relationships tomorrow can be seen in today's behaviour and background. The most recent study shows that these patterns can distinguish couples up to thirteen years later.
• We know how to reduce divorce rates. A study of Community Marriage Policies in 122 US cities has shown that divorce rates can be reduced over time when community leaders make a public show of support for healthy marriages. Several studies of the best educational programmes have shown that divorce rates can be reduced dramatically over 5 years. Surveys suggest that communities that employ couple-to-couple mentoring have abnormally low divorce rates.
• We know how to improve relationships. Many studies of relationship education programmes have shown that relationship conflict can be reduced and relationship quality increased.

What are the principles?

From this research, three principles emerge.

• Public promotion of marriage and commitment has an impact on private behaviour.
• Research-based relationship education is effective for all couples, married or not.
• Ongoing support through mentoring may be especially effective.
  
  

What are our goals?

Through application of these principles and the best available research-based programmes, our goals are:

• To encourage public support from community leaders and to increase public awareness of the relative merits and risks of marriage, cohabitation, and divorce;
• To introduce a new healthy norm of ongoing relationship education and support;
• To see Bedford divorce rates reduced by one third within 10 years
• To see evidence of socio-economic benefits associated with such reduction.

We aim to achieve this through:

• Active promotion of BCFT aims and programmes through media and community leaders. This will include information to educate the public of research findings about the benefits and protections provided by marriage and commitment.
• Offering relationship education to every couple passing various key life stages - getting married, having a baby, sending a child to primary school & secondary school.
• Recruiting and training ordinary married couples to act as "mentors" to couples getting married, couples in stepfamilies and couples in crisis.
  

What programmes do we use?

Our courses apply the best available programmes and relationship research

The relationship inventory FOCCUS (Facilitating Open Couple Communication, Understanding and Study) is used by our mentor couples.

Who can we help?

• Anyone who wants to have the best possible relationship with their partner.
• Anyone who wants to improve their parenting skills.

What courses do we organise and promote?

• The Marriage Course - for married couples who want to give their relationship a boost. BCFT encourages and promotes these excellent 7 evening courses but does not run them directly. See www.themarriagecourse.org
• Parenting courses - separate programmes for parents of children in the age groups 0-5, 6-11 and teens. Courses typically comprise 6 evenings