Departments: Families Unit

Andrew Selous
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills which Minister has responsibility for the Families Unit; what its current annual budget is; how many staff it employs; what its aims are; and which organisations are the unit's strategic partners.

Mr. Dhanda
Families Unit is part of the DfES Schools Directorate. It seeks to promote the importance of the family, including support to parents, across national and local government policy development. It supports the Parents Strategy Programme—a sub-programme of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Programme—which brings together the main areas of DfES work on parents. It has 22.6 staff and a budget in 2007-08 of £105 million. Staff in the Unit work with a wide range of strategic partners across the parenting and children services sector including: 2as1, AFCS, Coram Family, Families Need Fathers, Family Planning Association, Fathers Direct, Family Welfare Association, Marriage Care, National Association of Children's Information Services, National Children's Bureau, National Family and Parenting Institute, One Parent Families/Gingerbread, One Plus One, Opportunity Links, Project for Advocacy, Counselling and Education, Parenting UK, Parentline Plus, Relate, Safe Ground, Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationship, The Place2Be, Time for Families, Training and Development Agency.

I lead joint work to secure coherence in, and drive forward, the Department's policies in relation to parents and families, working with other Ministers, in particular, the Minister for Schools and 14-19 Learners and the Minister for Children, Young People and Families.