President of Malta meets with TCCR to discuss approaches to helping couples

The Chief Executive and other senior members of staff from TCCR were delighted to meet today with Her Excellency the President of Malta. The President, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, has recently set up a National Centre for Family Research which forms part of the President's Foundation for Social Well-being. It was with great pleasure therefore that we were able to discuss with her the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships' experience of devising and providing relational approaches to helping parental couples.

One such approach is the Parents as Partners programme, which TCCR is currently running in six London boroughs and Manchester. This programme, a group work intervention for parental couples, is itself derived from interventions designed in the U.S. by Professors Phil and Carolyn Cowan. More than 30 years evaluation of these U.S. programmes has found the relationship quality of couples who attend the groups is maintained, while emotional and behavioural problems in their children are reduced. Psychologists from Malta have recently been trained at TCCR in this approach.

Chief Executive of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, Susanna Abse, commented on the visit: "We were very pleased to be invited to meet with the President of Malta today. We see her invitation to us as a demonstration that word is spreading about the innovative and effective approaches which TCCR is developing to support people's couple relationships. We hope that the meeting will lead to further collaboration in future".

 

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