Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, The Parent Promise. I am joined by James Mayhurst and we are talking about probably that difficult subject of what happens when parents separate. Now, in the UK in 2021, 41% of marriages ended in divorce. And whilst it's a really challenging situation to go through and very difficult to navigate, it can be made even more difficult when our children end up being caught in the crossfire. And I don't think that we ever intend for that to be the case, but invariably, as we experience our own pain and hurt and heartbreak, our children often get tangled up within that process. And James is set up. This idea of this parent promise, which he'll explain in much more detail, but in essence, it's an opportunity for us, even before we have children. And of course, we don't want to preemptively assume that our relationships are going to fail, but we do want to almost go into these situations with a real clarity of intention about what might happen and how we might respond in a way that is compassionate and always has our children as that top priority. Now, you might be listening to this and thinking that this episode is not relevant to you because this isn't something that you're going through yourself. However, I do think that this is something that is worth listening to for all of us, because even if we're not going through it, we will have friends, loved ones that are going through this either now or in the future, that we can be there as a sounding board and as a safe space to kind of really encourage children, not to get caught in the crossfire so that we can end up in a scenario where we're always responding behaviorally with our children's best interests at heart, despite our pain and our hurt. So I hope you really find it's a powerful, probably in lots of ways, an uncomfortable conversation to be having, but I think a really, really important one. So I do hope that you enjoy it. And of course, as always, feel free to share it with anyone who you feel may benefit from it. And I'll see you in the next episode. We benefit from the wisdom that James brings and also to support the foundation. So until next time, here's James.
Speaker 2Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1An honour. I feel very privileged. So I think probably really a good place to start is what is the parents' promise and what was the kind of, what's the mission and vision behind it?
Speaker 2Right. Okay. Good question. So probably linked a little bit to my background professionally. So for my sins, I work in advertising. A bit like your sister, I understand. And so when I went through a separation process, I started to think about all the things that weren't working culturally, really. It's just something we don't talk about very well. And it's a system that's incredibly broken, which you may or may not get into. And it really felt that there was a role for communication because what I could see was lots of anger and lots of gendered anger on both sides. And therefore, you know, and I was doing my Google searches about 15 years ago, nothing seemed to move forward. But yet everyone, not a lot of people knew how broken it was. So where this started was, is there a role for communication to have a calmer discussion around separation for the benefit of children? Yeah. So that's where it started. And then would it be possible to bring together lots of organisations that were in the middle? You tend to have fringe groups. Everyone's heard of Fathers for Justice and everyone's heard of Women's Aid. And they sort of cancel each other out, really. And in terms of separation of children, things don't move forward, I suspect, because of that anger. So the politicians don't touch the subject because it's just too tricky to go near. So would it be possible to bring together lots of organisations? So I started on a journey of having lots of coffees with people and brought together 20 plus organisations and individuals that are part of our collective. Probably the most relevant, I suppose, or one of the most important for me was to get placed to be. The Children's Mental Health Charity, an organisation on board. So could we just change how we talk about this topic? And the Parents' Promise itself is our first thing. And it's a PR conceit, really, although it may become more than that. And the thought I had was, if you're rich, or if you're not rich, sometimes you can prenup material possessions that aren't actually that important. But nobody ever has a sort of prenup discussion about separation, because of course, we think it's not going to happen to us. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if you could create, or we could create, a promise, or somewhere between a prenup and a will, that would allow parents to talk about separation and promise to each other that whatever happens, they will do best by their children. So that's kind of where it started. That's what it is. And I can dive into a bit more detail.
Speaker 1Yeah. And that's such an important founding promise, isn't it? Because whilst the relationship breaks down in terms of the adults, the children are often called and caught in the crossfire, aren't they?
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. And that was it. And for those who haven't been touched by separation, many have, second or third hand, you actually look at the promise, which obviously we'll link to later, no doubt, in show notes. But it's incredibly simple, and therefore pretty powerfully disarming when you read it. I mean, essentially, it's sort of saying, whatever happens between the two of us in our relationship will make sure the children always see lots of us and our wider family, that we're essentially always nice to each other and respectful. We will work together to create the right conditions for you to thrive. And most people, and myself, pre-separation would go, well, that's just so basic. Why would you even need to do that? But yes, yeah, as many of us know, you do. And it's important to have that conversation from a behavioural economics point of view. It's a framing to go, do you know what, it's 15 years since we had that chat, but we did talk about that and now we're in the courts and all sorts of stuff's going down. But let's get back to kind of what we originally promised our children.
Speaker 1Yeah, which is really the foundation of all of it. Now, in terms of the number of children that this impacts, we're talking large numbers, aren't we?
Speaker 2Separation. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of the many issues around the subject is that the data are so poor. Nothing is tracked. Nobody knows. Of course, you've got marriages and people that aren't married. The family court, if you even go to the family court, doesn't track anything. And there's no kind of, you know, there's more follow up if you buy a dishwasher from Curry's. Then there is if you get a child arrangements order. But the data we use most is by the Family Solutions Group, and they estimated about 280,000 children annually are affected by separation. So that's I think it's about the size of Newcastle population. And that's huge, particularly within the context.
Speaker 1I mean, obviously, you've got place to be on board as well. But when we consider it in the context of the impact that separation has on children's wellbeing, even when it's amicable, to then compound it with what is often, I think, certainly in terms of I hear and I see first hand where children end up almost becoming weaponised.
Speaker 2Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, it's sort of very basically, I mean, I'm not, my parents didn't separate and are still together and happy, I think. I would imagine that, you know, having parents separate is going to have some effect on a child. And I'm no child expert, but I imagine like a cheese wedge and, you know, and I think long term it can be better for children if parents aren't happy. But it's about how do you minimise that? And then you've got this cheese wedge gets thicker and thicker and thicker when parents, you know, when there's any kind of conflict and then when there's weaponisation and all that kind of stuff. And a lot of this stuff happens and isn't properly talked about, which, you know, maybe we'll come on to as well. But yeah, the whole point of this is really as a society, can we separate better? And to me, it's still. A bit of a it's a huge blind spot. We don't even see the damage it's done. I think it's interesting that we don't realise culturally how damaging a bad separation is. And we still talk about it in the press and culturally like it's normal. Not the weaponising, but that it's normal that mum and dad or dad and dad or mum and mum will fall out. That's just what happens and almost suck it up. And a bit like maybe bullying when I was a kid. Yeah. There's still a lot of bullying, I'm sure. But back then it just happened. Now, I think we know how damaging it is and we've not had that cultural shift yet. I don't think.
Speaker 1Why don't we talk about it in that in that is part of it that we've got this social narrative and we can't kind of exclude the fact that, you know, when we grew up, we didn't have all of this instant access to information. It's an access to the lives of other people curated through social platforms. Is it just that we've almost become slightly desensitised? To it and so we don't talk about it because we just see it's a normal part of life or that there's still some stigma around it. And so that it's not something that we want to talk about.
Speaker 2I think there's stigma. Sure. Sure. And then I think back to the systems that a lot of these things take time to play through. So there's some horrendous, you know, I think systems that need rapidly updating that that kind of make these things worse. But if there is if you're talking about let's let's talk about weaponisation. or alienating children, that takes decades. decades to come out as a bad thing you know because the child doesn't realize that that other parent is a safe parent and that their relationship has been damaged only in their late teens 20s 30s do they realize it's you've got this massive lag and the same with the family courts i think is nothing's tracked so there's no there's no one centrally in government saying do you know what all these children are going through the family courts let's look at their health it should be a health thing not a judicial thing let's look at their health outcomes so i think there's a there's a shame culture's not caught up and there aren't the data yeah i think would be my triple
Speaker 1whammy yeah yeah and that then sort of perpetuates it and i think you know from considering this from a parenting perspective nobody i think sets out in a relationship that involves children to end up weaponizing or alienating or you know the poor children who find themselves feeling pretty much yeah in the middle and not really from a healthy perspective we know that children flourish most yeah when they have access to both parents that's fundamentally in terms of yeah and as you say they'll either be for a lot they'll be allowed but for for a lot of children yeah the impact the negative impact is happening either internalized and they're not actually communicating it or it then comes out in some sort of random act so we know all of this and yet as kind compassionate human beings who had a loving relationship that then created these incredible young people we find ourselves or people find themselves where this happens and do you think that there are some in the the research that you've done or the work that you've done as part of the wider parent promise are there some key things that we can be mindful of if we're listening to this episode right now and we're in the middle of a separation yeah and there's a some of this is just hitting a bit of a nudge and we're thinking i'm not sure my behavior is helping in this situation what are the sort of things that we tend to that are helpful in terms of us picking up and saying to ourselves and being mindful of ourselves to avoid this situation happening with our own children
Speaker 2yeah it's that's a yeah a big question i think there's a few things um in terms of the the impact what essentially your children will pick up on pretty much everything and that's something so we've just done this project for schools which obviously you know that come on to and speaking to a lot of the pastoral leads when we were researching what we were doing i was just struck by what they said is you have no your children see everything and we forget how in tune in tune they are they're just you know there's just a few you know what one was saying that you know they know if you're on a dating app but they just know from your behavior and that's it was the tiniest little thing so i think it's be wary of everything and maybe think back to your childhood and about things you remember the good and the bad from your parents they were probably quite small moments yeah and and sort of how impactful that would be so i think yeah try and think of that and ultimately it's hard isn't it because there may be another party that has more power in where you are and he's doing more of the bad things and that that makes it hard yeah but just try try and elevate and try and think long term one of the things we thought about but going back to the big culture point when we were doing the parents promise is we imagine that if people would download it and sign it the idea is you'd you sort of sign it together obviously without your children present or even maybe before you've had children yeah um but what we thought would be great is when you get married so if you get married church or registry office there's that moment where they sort of say look everyone here is going to help you throughout your life and and and help you sort of have a successful married life and then what tends to happen is if you separate often people split into camps yeah and that kind of makes it worse and you get these sort of echo chambers the idea would be that you would sign that with your best friends and then they would hold you accountable and honest they go do you know what maybe he did that or maybe she did that but for the good of your children let's both help you separate in the best way it's going to be hard but you've got to sort of elevate yourself above that so that's the kind of macro thing is together if you can work through it then it'll make things a lot better for your children and we wanted to start to you know they got a bit of a flack at the time didn't they chris martin and whatever they talked about it yeah the unconscious yeah exactly that's to be celebrated and there are loads of people i know who've celebrated what i've celebrated you've separated well and that should be held up as that's brilliant parenting well done and we don't quite do that yet no and
Speaker 1it goes back to the point that you made and i would love to touch on the school's work that you've done but i think you know this idea that children are watching us all of the time and we think we're being discreet we think that they're not picking up on things and they want you know i i hear it when i go into schools i hear it when i'm working with children one-to-one is that they pick up on so much of that and actually for a lot of children the separation is a good thing actually in that you know if it's done applicably because the fit with their parents no longer working and as long as it's that keeping the children at the heart of every decision that is made with a what's in the best interest of my child rather than the point that i want to score right now with my ex-partner because i'm i feel like i'm being hard done by yeah so can we touch on because i think that this is quite a really important piece is about what young people are actually saying about you know the programs that you're doing in schools and the work that you're doing and that what what are you picking up from there that is around them watching us yeah and the impact that it has on them so
Speaker 2we don't have that much to do i have to defer to experts who can talk more lucidly there's a lady amazing um psychologist called harold rudkin who might be good one for your podcast yeah which is she works closely with so so i've learned a lot from that sort of second hand but as i said that's what i got from the schools is just understanding that this is a big issue that they face and our other partners we have um as well as place to be spurgeons uh and they say you know in their sort of the top five plus reasons that children reach out or they children get referred for counseling services separation is is a big one so so it's it's you know and it's it's not a
Speaker 1surprise is it really no because it's having that it's having that big issue but it's a big one and it's a big one and it's a big one and it's a big one and it's a big one and obviously i know that that's the starting campaign and i'm sure there'll be other things but i i really resonated and really love this idea that as you say when partners come together and even if you choose to have godparents and other things it's all about that sort of that village around you and sort of having that support and actually i love the idea that making that promise even pre-children it's like this is yeah this is what we would like to do and i think would like you all to hold us accountable for do you are you hoping that you're going to be able to get more into that space of that people being intentional yeah i
Speaker 2mean that the idea i mean that's hopefully that will grow and grow i mean it's there for everyone to download and use is um yeah the perfect time and i'm maybe trying to have some chats with the nct it's that kind of it's that sort of time where because i remember that is you have that half a you have you know it's a very good but you have you have half the sort of session on like basically one of you is going to be at home it's changing now isn't it slightly one of you is going to be at home and one of you's are going to be at work and you're going to both be grumpy basically it's hard and and you do a little role play and having children is incredibly hard and i think we just need to have a bit more realism around what might happen from the numbers point of view and you say being more intentional and when you have a child you're that parent for life and in in in a very good way yeah and it's just understanding that's whatever happens that's the most important thing and we and and you know we're all flawed and nothing's perfect and embracing that we tend to in society i think you're either happily married there's just a binary yeah there's no such thing as a perfect marriage there's lots of very unhappy and there's you know and you're not a failure if you if you end the partnership so it's kind of breaking away from that and being more to be more honest about relationships and as you said more intentional about we've had this beautiful bundle of joy whatever happens we've got to look after him or her and do what's right for him or her which you know and let's agree to do that yeah that's really what this is about yeah and keeping them
Speaker 1at that at that center and the reality is even when we become parents we we change we'll forever change the moment that we have our children exactly and that process of the sleepless nights and uh you know whether little johnny gets invited to a party or not or whether they make the 18 or all the things that we yeah that we're angst ridden about and we see frictions and challenges even when we're still within a partnership yes around how we parent but the idea should always be when we're making a promise to each other when we have children is that actually we're going to take our own aspirations or living vicariously through our children or anything to what's in the best interests of my child and now we're going to take a quick pause for a while word from our sponsors at harmony bank we believe
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Speaker 1what are your long-term aspirations in terms of how you'd like this and particularly i would imagine within organizations so you look thinking that you'd like organizations to get actively involved in supporting yeah i mean
Speaker 2i think we've done a couple of talk about some of the other things we've done but yeah i suppose long term the big one is to change how we separate in the uk for the benefit of our children and that will take a number of forms but there are a couple of layers the there's a big social one so i think if a lot of people who start there you know there's lots of people who want to change things in in this space i think the hardest place to start is the law could you just get caught up yeah and what we wanted to do was act a bit more like a brand and just do some stuff and change culture so the biggest change would be you know that people embrace separating well it's a big change we stopped we stopped having the kind of standard media portrayal of of kind of how separation can be and we stopped we stopped accepting bad separations you still see this there's a few things you still see a lot in you know in social media someone's cheated on somebody like you know don't let him see the effing kids well that's that's not right because that's kind of that's child abuse and you sort of i saw this i talk about this quite a lot i don't know the guy but danny dyer yeah there was a couple of years ago articles about danny talking about his life and his ups and downs and i was just struck by there was a period where him and his wife separated or partner separated briefly and she stopped him seeing danny and firstly that's not good no unsurprisingly because we've just been talking about that but what i thought was really telling is nobody picked up on that so the times just wrote the piece and i go he's not there yet like that you know i don't think there was any safeguarding issues there was and then it was just like and that was just that's just that's just fair game and i was shocked i did a post about it and not that anyone reads my linkedin but i was like that's the problem we've got it's like again i've not seen this yet but ever but it's been out for ages like mrs doubtfire yeah
Speaker 1oh my gosh isn't
Speaker 2that about a woman stopping a father sink and that's i mean we should joke about things society understand but it doesn't again that's just seen as kind of normal i've not seen it so i'm commenting yeah
Speaker 1no i have and i love it but it is those things we don't see we
Speaker 2don't we just not see that because i think if we look at the stuff we look at 20 30 years ago in culture we go we can't say that now and and and rightly that we can't say that but i just don't we've got there with separation so socially to change yeah to change how we do it and then you know there are things we probably want to change systemically this needs to be a health issue we need to have better data you know there are things that could change in the courts people shouldn't go to the courts ultimately yeah and when they have to go it should be those families that really need to go and then there are things i think you could do to make the system a lot more efficient and better um but we're trying to make practical change and there's a couple things i can tell you activities we've done that that make a difference and because they make a difference the politicians and a lot of the people that matter like us and they embrace what we do so we've got more to come and the idea is just uh let's do some stuff and then hopefully if we do enough stuff people start to talk about the issue and we'll start to make the
Speaker 1shift yeah and it is interesting that you know that story that you told about about danny dyer particularly and this idea it feels like there's a there's almost this value system that because you as an individual were unfaithful yeah that therefore equals bad parent that could be bad mother bad father and therefore that means that you no longer add any value yeah in terms of that child's life and i guess if nothing else it's calling us all out on our role if we're not in as part of the sort of separation process but our role as the friend exactly oh yeah the uncle the godparent in perpetuating that rather than the sounding board of i know you're in pain and i know that this is really hard but stopping your partner from having access is not the right thing for your child
Speaker 2exactly but we don't tend we don't and that's exactly it that's what i was hoping we're hoping with the parents promises you go okay so you know why hasn't i'm making these names up why hasn't andy seen his daughter for six months and and i've that's what i thought i thought that that's social shame could be used to good effect that it's like okay i mean you know if it was the mum brocking why should we say it's a mum stopping a father that's not good like why isn't he seeing like he may have done that thing or he may not have done that thing but that's just not it's not a fit punishment and actually who you're punishing is the kid yeah and it's just yeah it's kind of education in that sense but yeah we're not there yet are we it happens all the time i think yeah and yeah
Speaker 1yeah and i and i remember somebody i can't remember exactly who it is but this has really stuck with me i mean i've got adult children now but i remember someone saying that the relationship we have with our children is significantly longer our relationship with them as adults yeah so this weaponizing children even if we say right that's it you can't see ex-parent when our children are 18 they get they get to choose and going back to this notion of our children are always watching yeah our children will formulate their own view yeah regardless of the pain that we might be feeling and experiencing at the time yeah and so actually we're trying to control a very short period of time that would have such a profound effect yeah that and then they choose their own trajectory post 18 and whatever that might look
Speaker 2like i think to your um point earlier i think nobody really nobody wants to damage their children i think one thing that you're going to start to do some one of the ideas we've had um it's just like a very simple it's like a kind of causal cosmo quiz thing but basically you just you just i love a cosmo yeah well you need just to answer those questions and it spits out a kind of answer if you were to do um i hope you'll work on some agencies to build this next year but you know let's map out how much of your time your child is spending with both of you and is there much conflict and all of this stuff and then you just move the dials along and you can see because there are some data on this is if back to the place to be stats if there are issues it's more likely that your children are going to present other issues later in life so i think it's a good idea to do that and i think it's a good idea to do that so let's get all the graphic equalizers to the good stuff like see lots of both of you not have conflict in front of them not have conflict at all if you can and then lo and behold then they're the conditions for them to thrive and i think both parents all parents would go i want that don't i so let's how do we get there then versus you know i think at the moment it's a lack of education understanding that yeah the child needs that or they just need me or blah
Speaker 1blah blah blah yeah or they're in pain and then i need to protect them from the bad parent that's made a poor choice and this is what i'm doing yeah so
Speaker 2hopefully yeah there's we can educate in that
Speaker 1sense and i think it's that raising awareness first of all isn't it if it's in our consciousness societally that this is what's happening and it's on all of us because fundamentally even if we are not parents ourselves we may be employers and then if you just see it from a bottom line perspective we're all invested in ensuring that children's experience of their upbringing is as optimal as we can make it i mean we're human beings we're human beings we're human beings we're human beings we're gonna even if we're in a happy relationship we're going to make poor choices that will impact our children in some way so you can't raise them without screwing them up in some way but it's about the things that we know that that have an impact that we can avoid it's the avoidables yeah exactly really more than anything else so from a parent's perspective you in terms of what you've been doing and the conversations that you've been having yeah are there ways that we can sort of check in on ourselves because you know what it's like you find yourself sort of yeah a week's gone three weeks gone three months have gone and you haven't really checked in on how you're communicating with your children about your ex-partner yeah how you are ensuring access is yeah easy and flexible and you're not no i'm you know i'm ensuring that there's opportunities for them to to co-parent but then you're actually making it really difficult because it can only happen between this time and this time in this day and all of the rest of it are there have you got there yet as part of the campaign in terms of ways that we can be checking on ourselves yeah i think that's a really good
Speaker 2example of how we can be checking in on ourselves i suppose the sim yeah there's maybe lots of different tools i suppose the simplest one is look at the promise and go are we doing you know so is you know if is is are our children seeing lots of both of us in the wider family you know this is the very top level are we always nice and respectful to each other and can we build on that because you know we don't need to sort of do a handover where we sort of stare at the floor and be frosty and all that kind of stuff and then are we actually working together because children having children is probably the most crazy organic thing ever isn't it and that's one of the problems with schedules and court orders and all of that you just need to not be a dick about somebody bringing somebody home late or or you know sometimes you know the child is going to go to a party and you just like what's best for your child to go to the party so it's just are you being as you said are you being as flexible as possible yeah in terms of if you're pretty sure you're well you want to check in about are you doing some bad stuff i can't remember the academics name it will come to me you can put it in the show notes but there is a sort of 17 signs of parental alienation and you could look at those and go do you know what if any of those happened you'd have to be pretty self-aware to reach for that list even but yes yeah okay so have i done that have i said something nasty about her have i done this done that then that that would be that would be a kind of kind of i suppose real world way of checking in you know
Speaker 1have you we will yeah we'll find that and we will put it in the show notes because i think it's just it's just about being we're so busy with our lives and we're so busy with our lives and we're so busy thinking that we're doing the right thing and this is not a criticism of parents at all we're all guilty of it um in in any aspect but it's about being able to check in on yourself and be surrounded by people who you trust yeah who are also there to say hold on a minute mary hann i don't think you're acting in yeah well one thing you
Speaker 2could do we just think i've never really thought about it as deep as this is just talk to other people i talk to lots of lots of people talk to me now if they're separating but i talk to lots of separate older or people who who have had separated parents and then maybe our age um and talk to them because they'll tell you you know like 30 yeah 30 years ago you know they will they will be able to tell you stuff through lived experience that will be super helpful you may yes you may have a you may have a family friend you know or your best mate their parents may have separated ask them because i'll tell you yeah
Speaker 1because it's it's it is it's that having something i love actually that the idea of having the promise is something that you refer back to always i always love a stick it on the fridge stick on the
Speaker 2fridge yeah exactly
Speaker 1remind yourself of those promises that you've made and even if you're not even in a situation where you're separating but you're just simply putting it up there and a reminder each day about that oh james is there anything that we've not talked about in terms of the work that you're doing and the campaign that we ought to do a couple of
Speaker 2yes a couple of things we've done subsequent to the promise so we try and um do stuff as i said maybe to misquote but for good effect zuckerberg um we try and move fast and create things yeah relatively fast for people that do it on the side of our desk so we try and do some stuff so we've done two things in the world uh since we launched the promise in 2021 in 2023 we looked at the world world of um employment and hr yeah so i was aware that because i was i was running an ad agency when i went through a separation and then as a result of that about about a year later i went in-house i went to unilever and i had great bosses on both sides but i was aware there was never a policy because nobody and you know post-covid particularly there were lots of hr policies about really important things but there was never anything on separation so um with the support of an mp called siobhan bailey um who i got introduced to and mps are great because when they email people people respond so we got we ended up getting eight huge companies to sign up to tesco asda vodafone unilever right pwc we're nearly nearly six hundred thousand employees affected positively by the change we just said look this wasn't a big lift and everyone we talked to said i can't believe we don't do this already and it's dead easy to do but it was just to sort of basket up what already exists under a little subhead that said if you're separating you know firstly here's some resources which we created to help people get off on the right track yeah and then secondly um you probably need flex easy now but it wasn't pre-code flexible working because if you're going to separate well one of you is going to be picking up the kids when they didn't you've got to reconfigure together how you're going to live your your lives as we talked about you're still parents um so that and then pointing people towards counselling and just generally making it less shamey so there's advice for line managers as to how to talk to people because no one knows and you know yeah this is a thing that doesn't isn't done in three months no so we did that in 2023 and that has been pretty successful and then just now we've just launched our education initiative which i can tell you about yeah
Speaker 1please yes this is this is the schools this is the schools
Speaker 2so um again just realized that schools is and separation is a big topic and that parents probably take their issues to schools yeah yep and that schools probably aren't trained in how to deal with that which can just make things worse and it's very stressful for teachers yeah so we set out to find out whether this was true and then to do something useful in response if it was and sadly and unsurprisingly we found out that it was true so again we can um send you some more materials i think like over 50 of teachers we surveyed nearly 10 000 teachers over 50 said that their school had become a location for or source of conflict yeah a lot and then tiny numbers were trained like 11 were trained in any way less than five percent knew anything about the legalities of separation so what that could mean is a parent can say something that's not true and the teacher just won't know sort of what to do and we'll kind of you know like he can't pick her up or she can't pick her up and they said in terms of the issues they'd found like 60 had had one parent trying to stop the other parent being on school communication right 20 that tried to stop a school pick up all of this nonsense really yeah and what you know that's not good for children no and you know if again if you've got this thing which is happening and it becomes out of control so you've got issues at home school should be a safe place i'm just going
Speaker 1to say exactly that should be the safe space from what from all of the things that are going on yeah
Speaker 2and clearly it's not and then poor teachers it's not their fault it's a bit like smartphones they didn't ask for them but they've got them you have to deal with them so um so to be helpful we've created some resources to help teachers understand practically emotionally and legally what they need to do what can do and it's you know it's nicely designed it's easy to read it's not too long but they're really good um so so pdfs for teachers we've also got resources for primary and secondary in terms of third-party resources books all of that stuff that you can kind of give give to children we've created a school separation policy template so we discovered incredibly only four in 10 schools even had a separation policy right and i can't remember about 15 20 percent no sorry eight percent that have a separation lead a capacitorial lead again it's a bit of a big thing that lots of children have and there'll be lots of mental health leads but yeah exactly but not specifically
Speaker 1and that that requires a whole unique skill set and an understanding
Speaker 2so we've done a one page uh for schools for you know these are the key principles for a separation policy and then we've done um creative advice for parents as well so what do your children need from you what does a good separation look right around school and then ending on some practical points we've come up with the the a person who's much cleverer than me in our group a guy called bob greg who runs only mums and dads who are a brilliant sort of charity for separating parents we wanted something that was incredibly tangible because there's a lot going on during separation and all these there's too much information and you know what what do you need to look out for so we call them the five to thrive which we borrowed from someone
Speaker 1else yeah i love that yep
Speaker 2and the what what do you need to look out for as teachers and parents in the early days or with your children so one of the most important things to have is a holistic communication strategy between school yeah so have that that's a kind of positive to have look at your children's extra extracurricular activities are they still doing the stuff that they were doing lights them up because if they're not that's a sign yeah how are their friendship groups are they stable because again if they're not that's a sign make sure there's an outlet for them to discuss their mental health if they need to do that and then another side is school attendance and homework and that kind of stuff that you know really need to keep an eye on so we're pushing that to say look if you can look at those things you'll you'll have a better handle on your on your child
Speaker 1yeah and that's a symptom check and it's a it's a space to actually have a conversation isn't it yeah so have a holistic
Speaker 2sort of conversation read the parents promise do the right stuff and then there are these four things within the five to look out for to check that your children are hopefully sort of coping as best they can
Speaker 1and if we have got hr professionals listening at the moment people heads or even anyone what can they do to join and be part of so you see they just
Speaker 2need to go to the website which is the parents promise.org.uk and there are separate tabs for our hr initiative well first you can sign the promise that's on the home page and then there's a hr initiative tab got all the stats and all the documents and the same for education so it's all there to be downloaded but great support from the unions teaching unions and um we had our launch event in parliament two weeks ago we had the ceo of the church school so that's a million children so we're trying to get in as high as we can to get the resources out there but if it's not come through in a newsletter to you yeah just go to the site and download them
Speaker 1oh my god james you're doing some amazing much needed work and in terms of raising that awareness so actually i feel now i shall be more intentional and in the work that i do and when i and actually as a friend okay really more than anything else as well so james thank you thank you very much
Speaker 2for having me you
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