"Marriage and Relationship Support" is the provision of help and support for couples to enable them to enter and maintain, stable long term relationships. Marriage support is provided by a wide range of agencies and individuals. Relationship Support can be effective in saving marriages, and in helping couples to improve their relationships. Not only does it provide valuable help to individuals, it also saves the government and other public agencies large amounts of money.

The rising rate of marital breakdown and divorce is a matter of deep concern. It causes much damage to couples and their children, and imposes huge costs on the taxpayer (about £5 billion a year). Relationship Support helps couples reduce conflict and avoid divorce, but also to help them part in a civilised way when this becomes unavoidable.

These aims fall into three categories of prevention:

• Primary Prevention – PREPARATION - aims to promote well being before problems become evident; Examples of this include working with young people and marriage preparation
• Secondary Prevention – ENHANCEMENT - aims to limit the intensity and duration of problems. This could, for example, take the form of intervention at known stress points in the course of a marriage, perhaps initially by GPs, health visitors or others; and
• Tertiary Prevention – CRISIS - aims to treat existing problems, to reduce distress and to limit future damage. Most counselling and psychotherapy would fall within this area.

Despite the increasing availability of counselling services, an apt description of the present position would be "too little and too late". The majority of couples whose marriage are in difficulty or ends in divorce do not use such services. And when they do, it is usually when the difficulties have become extreme and the marriage is near to or has reached breakdown.

Raising awareness on the full range of relationship support as a preventive tool is critical and in the public interest as the demands on marriages and relationships continues to grow.