As a happily married man, I firmly believe that the family unit is the most fundamental part of a healthy society. But you don’t have to listen to me: study after commissioned study from think tanks and pressure groups says the same thing.

Sadly, in today’s Britain, family life is disintegrating faster than ever. More than 40% of marriages end in divorce. In more than half these cases, at least one child under 16 is involved. Even more worrying, nearly one in two parents who live together split up before their child’s fifth birthday.

The results of all this disruption are catastrophic. Broken marriages go hand in hand with juvenile crime, drugs, alcohol consumption and mental-health problems. Stir in the added ingredient of Asian descent, with all its cultural, legal and religious implications, and the waters get very murky indeed. At UNITY, the only family counselling charity for Asians in Scotland, we offer all types of marriage counselling, but have a special focus on pre-marital work, on the basis that prevention is better than cure. We deliver our services through trained counsellors, who are all familiar with Asian issues.

Through these pages, I invite you to find out more about what we offer.

Azeem Ibrahim
Chairman