The Independent from London, Greater London, England • 3

THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 10 016 THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY 10 016 Attending parenting classes should be normal, says PM David Cameron wants to make it and for people to take up parenting classes to help them communicate, discipline and play with their children. Parents could receive vouchers to encourage them to continue with classes, even as their children grow older, as part of a wide-ranging plan to put family life at the heart of the second term. Mr Cameron will also double funding to help more than 300,000 couples save their relationships as he looks to tackle poverty by reducing the number of separated parents over the next ve years. The Prime Minister wants to make parenting classes more accessible for families, he will say when he unveils what he will dub a Life Chances Strategy tomorrow. He is expected to say: will examine the possible introduction of a voucher scheme for parenting classes and recommend the best way to incen tivise parents to take them up.

the end, getting parenting and the early years right just about the hardest-to-reach families, about everyone. We all have to work at it. And if you have a strong support network if you know other mums or dads, having your first child can be enormously isolating. course they come with a manual, but is it right that all of us get so little guidance? made progress. dramatically expanded the number of health visitors, and that is crucial.

it deals with one particular part of parenting the first few weeks and months. What about later on, when it comes to good play, communication, behaviour By Mark Leftly and Tom McTague and discipline? We all need more help with this the most important job ever have. So I believe we now need to think about how to make it normal even aspirational to attend parenting The Government will also provide £70m over five years for counselling, supporting charities such as Relate, One Plus One and Marriage Care. About 160,000 couples were helped in the last Parliament from just £35m of funding; the extra cash will double that number and help train 10,000 relationship experts. Mr Cameron is expected to say: are the best anti-poverty measure ever invented.

They are a welfare, education and counselling system all wrapped up into one. in families that break apart are more than twice as likely to experience poverty as those whose families stay together. why strengthening families is at the heart of our Conservative sources said this er would help the party seize anti-poverty territory from Labour at a time when the opposition is distracted by in ghting that has resulted from Jeremy protracted reshu e. They think the message will help dampen criticism that the orts to balance the books after the nancial crisis have created greater inequality. Relate chief executive Chris Sherwood said: support can help to reduce family breakdown, which is a key driver of poverty and can result in poor outcomes for children.

Relationships are under increasing pressure. Currently over a million people every year access support from Relate, but this is the tip of the iceberg. This funding could make a real difference to the life chances of thousands of The £70m will be delivered through contracts with charities and local authorities. The Department for Work and Pensions invited bids from family and relationship support organisations for some of the money in November. Those who have been successful will be noti ed in the next few weeks.

The organisations who have bid to deliver this support are from the family and relationship support sector, most of whom have extensive knowledge and experience in delivering family and couple support. The Gingerbread charity has estimated that there are around 2 million single parents in the UK, accounting for one in four families with dependent children. The majority of single parents do not receive child maintenance from the absent parent, while two in five children in single-parent families live in relative poverty compared with one in four of those raised by couples. Mr Cameron previously tried to present himself as a prime minister who puts families at the heart of domestic policymaking when he spoke at the Relationships Alliance Summit in 2014. He said: for those of us who want to strengthen and improve society, there is no better way than strengthening families and strengthening the relationships on which families are built.

tackling crime and anti-social behaviour or debt and drug addiction; whether dealing with welfare dependency or improving education outcomes whatever the social issue the answer should always begin with john rentoul age 38 David Cameron visiting a centre in London in 2012 chris harris Will it be jam tomorrow from the Tories? Not on my plate Being a paper which prides itself on independence and balance, we report good and bad news on all political parties, but holding the government of the day to account usually means more challenging stories about the in all forms and proving tough although news last week about the dangers of alcohol and sugar help keep the mind focused. A new free app (Sugar Smart) tells you the sugar content of packaged food from the barcode, which is useful. (What a pity Whole Foods, the supermarket adds glucose syrup to its chicken If still going strong on a resolution, congratulations and good luck; a third of the way there. Or if cracked or not signed up, worry: you can sponsor me or one of my colleagues! Justgiving.com/Lisa-Markwell1 cameron also hopes to reduce the number of separations, with £70m for relationship counselling Conservative Party. Today there are three (cautiously) positive reports about Tory policy: we applaud the U-turn by Nicky Morgan on teaching feminism in schools (p9); there could be a positive effect for society from Michael ambition to reduce prisoner numbers (p11); and David speech tomorrow, outlining new ways to tackle poverty (above), sound promising.

We will be watching closely to see whether the fine words become fine In December, when we launched our Charity Appeal in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital, I wrote that I knew you would be generous. With a month to go, you along with readers of our sister papers The Independent i and the London Evening Standard have raised £2m. That is a phenomenal amount for which we are so grateful. It will make a huge difference to everyone at the hospital. For instance, £3 buys a box of microscope slides for researchers; and £50 allows a parent to stay overnight to be near their sick child.

not done yet and if, like me, pledged to It Up for by stopping something for January, fundraising continues. on Day 10 of giving up sugar Lisa Markwell editor ONTENTS etters social network email Navigation Tr avel Crosswor p2 puff We ather p2 puf Ea gl WeaTHeR drier, brighter day, but still some showers, especially in the west P45 CROSSWORDS Prize and concise P45 Beelzebub, the new review P37 etters social network email Navigation Tr avel Crosswor p2 puff We ather p2 puf Ea gl recycled paper made up of the raw material for uK newspapers in 2012 NE bene ts plan to keep UK in the EU be warn academics P7 SPO Manchester United scraped a 1-0 FA Cup victory against She eld United P1 ENT Rupert Cornwell: Trump is tapping into disgruntled blue-collar views P43 Arts Books Author Louise Doughty on ce politics and getting drunk with the From Quentin Tarantino to Tracey Ullman your guide to the cultural week ONEY Home and away: Why more than one in four house sales are falling through P57 A Seven pages of brilliant holiday ideas, including Samoa and St Petersburg P47 tattoos have attracted everyone from maharajahs to squaddies. Nick Clark studies the man who started it all in Britain, celebrated in a new exhibition rom kings and maharajahs to dock workers, if you wanted a tattoo in late 19th-century London there was only one place to go: a salon above a Turkish bath house, where Sutherland Macdonald, the rst professional tattoo artist in Britain, plied his trade. Rare images of Macdonald and his work, as well as his business cards and client list, are to go on display later this month as part of an exhibition at the Museum of London. It has recently emerged that Macdonald was the rst person in the Post Office Directory, the Yellow Pages of its day, to offer a professional tattoo service in London.

The publication created the category of tattooists for him in 1894, and he was the only entry under that heading for the next four years. Matt Lodder, a lecturer in contemporary art and visual culture at the University of Essex who worked on the exhibition, said: tattooing was going on, there is no evidence of another professional studio in Britain at the time, working on paying One DW Purdy had previously been thought to be the rst person to open a tattoo parlour in London in 1870, but Dr research dispelled this as a from a book called Memoirs of a Tattooist attributed to tattoo artist George Burchett and published in 1953. Dr Lodder found images of work in locations including the National Archives and the zoological archive at Harvard University; they will go on public display for the rst time at the Museum of London. Example of Sutherland work, 1897 reuters Incredible ink Jen Kavanagh, curator of the exhibition, Tattoo London said: tattooing existed in London before that, especially with travel and encounters with other cultures where tattooing was prominent. as for tattoo artists working in London, in the grand scheme of things fairly Macdonald worked in Jermyn Street and was considered one of the pioneers, alongside Tom Riley and, later, Burchett.

He said his clients ran from assorted dukes and maharajahs to the kings of Norway and Denmark. King Edward VII was tattooed in Jerusalem and his son George acquired body art in Japan, sparking a trend among the public. of the reasons Macdonald was so busy was because people wanted to copy the Dr Lodder said. claimed to have tattooed George but he probably did He started with small, decorative images and quickly progressed to larger scale works of art, Dr Lodder said. These included Japanese dragons, copies of salon paintings by artists such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and wildlife work by Archibald Thorburn.

One client had an engraving by landscapist John Constable tattooed on to his body. was going on as far back as the 16th century, but it was much more ad hoc, not people turning up and paying for a tattoo as a commodity until the late 19th Dr Lodder said. As well as early tattooing history, the exhibition looks at how body art has developed over the past 40 years, concentrating on one existing studio that opened in each of the past four decades. end of the 1970s is really interesting. a Rubicon moment for tattoo history in several Dr Lodder said.

sometimes referred to as the tattoo driven by guys from America. It began to be seen as more of an art form. It all blossomed into the craziness we have There are now more parlours than ever before in London. been a really important part of the cultural fabric of this Dr Lodder added. brings everyone together from kings and aristocrats to squaddies and their Tattoo London opens at the Museum of London, London EC2, on 29 January.