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The work of marriage guidance counsellors.

Introduction The first Marriage Guidance Council was established in the late 1930s. In response to growing concern about the increasing divorce rate, which was then rising to 7000 divorces per annum, a small group of clergy, magistrates, doctors and social workers conceived the notion of establishing an agency which would specifically offer help to people in marital difficulties. Faute de mieux the work was undertaken by volunteers and was carried out with more courage than expertise. The early records show that these pioneers initially saw themselves as primarily a referral service, diagnosing problems under such headings as legal, medical, psychiatric or contraceptive, and guiding clients to the appropriate source of help. The early counsellors were spurred on by what the first Chairman, Dr Herbert Gray, termed a sense of compulsion, not with a clear idea of how they were to achieve their aims, but 'as nobody else was trying, we must needs try' (Holt, 1971). The post-war years witnessed a rapid expansion in the number of Marriage Guidance Councils, and in 1947 recognition was given by the Denning Committee on Matrimonial Procedures which recommended financial support from public funds. The Home Office accordingly made the first grant-in-aid in 1948 to the National Marriage Guidance Council, the Family Discussion Bureau (now at the Tavistock Institute and renamed the Institute of Marital Studies) and the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council which had by then been established independently by the Catholic Church. The National Marriage Guidance Council and the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council remain essentially the products of this history. They have preserved their status as voluntary organizations, with the Home Office continuing grant-in-aid, currently providing approximately two-thirds of their income. They also continue to provide a marriage counselling service using voluntary counsellors, now with national coverage. The small number of full-time staff are employed centrally on training, supervision and administrative duties. Counselling itself is still seen as a suitable expression of social concern by appropriate volunteers, though methods of counselling have been developed greatly since the pioneer days, borrowing in particular from psychiatric insights and casework practice. Close links are established between the marriage counselling agencies and the Tavistock, particularly with the Institute of Marital Studies, which contributes substantially to training tutors and supervisors. Since marital counselling is extremely stressful, great emphasis has been placed from the beginning on careful selection of counsellors to ensure that only people of high potential and integrity are recruited. A rigorous selection procedure is followed by basic training consisting of six residential training sessions; all counsellors are required to attend regular case discussion sessions, and they work under the guidance of a supervisor or tutor. In these days when volunteers are being recruited as social work auxiliaries for work with after-care patients, exprisoners, old people in hospitals and in many other fields, marriage guidance counsellors stand mid-way between the auxiliary and the professional worker. Like the auxiliaries they are part-time voluntary workers, but unlike them they are not carrying a caseload on behalf of a professional worker but are totally autonomous in their counselling. They are indeed volunteers working to a professional standard.