Support through tough times
I am sure by now everyone has seen the John Lewis Christmas advert in partnership with Action for Children.
As usual, it’s a tearjerker whenever me and Stacey are watching the TV.
Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited along to an event by Action for Children to mark the ten year anniversary of their Functional Family Therapy service in Renfrewshire.
The service has been really successful since its launch in 2012, and has been able to branch out to provide the therapy outside of Renfrewshire.
Functional Family Therapy is extremely successful in improving the family relationship and reducing reoffending.
I heard how therapists tailor their therapy to each member of the family unit, working with their strengths and developing tactics to overcome their difficulties and ensure that children and young people from 8 to 18 are able to stay within the home setting and out of care.
As someone with my own family, you can imagine how moving it was to hear how this therapy changed the life of one of my own constituents and kept their family together at home through the toughest of times.
So far, Functional Family Therapy has helped more than 1,000 families in Scotland and hopefully will expand to help many more.
Keeping children out of care and families together is essential to a healthy society and the amazing work done by Action For Children is a testament to how things can be done differently.
Sadly, however the care and compassion shown by the therapists at the programme are not virtues which seem to be shared with those in government at Westminster.
The UK Government’s treatment of people seeking asylum is an example of the values they seem to have.
The home secretary said it herself when she said it was her “dream” to send people seeking asylum to Rwanda for processing.
People coming to this country to try and better their own lives left in overcrowded camps with outbreaks of diphtheria under the watch of this home secretary who seems to have no sympathy for the suffering of others.
We had a health minister who presided over numerous dodgy PPE contracts and the largest death toll in Europe who recently came third in a popular reality show and paid £400,000 to abandon his constituents in a cost of living crisis.
We also had an exPrime Minister who in her 44 days in office crashed the economy attempting to make the wealthy even wealthier and another former Prime Minister charged for attending parties and breaking his own Covid rules while people died.
Our current Prime minister is the richest one we have ever had worth over £700 million.
How can Rishi Sunak understand the plight of the ordinary person when he is worth hundreds of times more than what the average person in this country would see in a lifetime?
Three quarters of UK homes are predicted to be in fuel poverty by January next year while energy companies make record profits and the UK government is doing its least to help.
It is times like these that care and compassion are most needed, however, like I said, I feel these virtues in Westminster are sadly lacking.