Neighbourhoods

The divide

Here’s a short message. The Divide, a film about the damaging effects of income inequality, is about to be released and there are screenings scheduled up and down the country. The sub-title is ‘What happens when the rich get richer?’ There’s an intro clip here.

Get your eyeballs on it, encourage others to do likewise, and encourage screenings wherever possible – here’s the how-to info for community screenings.

I was lucky enough to see it last night and was hugely impressed. Given that the film was inspired by The spirit level I was expecting a kind-of glossed-up Richard Wilkinson lecture (not that there's too much wrong with that) – but it’s reassuringly accessible, a cleverly woven mixture of human stories combined with some raw political and economic context. It’s essentially a mini-exposure of the devastating effects of the neo-liberalist project.

It’s also superbly, sensitively made. When you’ve seen the forceful monologue from the imprisoned man (seen in the image above) you will not forget it, either for its artistic power or for its moral and socio-political resonance.

Here’s a longer message. Last week I was at a conference on ‘the future of community work’, arranged following the announcement of the closure of my former organisation, Community Development Foundation (and before that, Urban Forum). In between the organising and the event itself, we heard the announcement of the closure of Community Matters.

Despite the sense of crisis given the collapse of so much community development infrastructure in England, one of my former colleagues was arguing with fervent optimism that the battle is not lost. I must admit that - without analysing what any of us means by ‘the battle’ (was it just a skirmish? Some skirmish) – my sense has been for some time that the neo-liberals have won. There’s a lot of wound-licking and dazed regrouping to be done.

Then following the premiere last night, in discussion with Kate Pickett, Richard Wilkinson and the film’s director Katharine Round, someone asked if The Divide represents the beginning of the end for neo-liberalism. And again I confess that, like a few others in the theatre, I chortled momentarily at what seemed like naïve optimism. But I wonder. It’s hard to detect the beginnings of things, perhaps the seeds will take.

Neo-liberalism was quite strategic, as Noam Chomsky emphasises in the film. And it’s not that we need an alternative vision. We now have our sustainable development goals and as Kate Pickett pointed out last night, they include ‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’. The Divide website includes a Take Action section. We need roles that we feel we can play.

As I crossed London on my way home, a squatting figure asked me if I could spare some change. I gave him roughly the value of the glass of wine that I had been given at the reception after the film. ‘Good luck,’ I said, feeling immediately how pathetic were my gesture and words, in the context of what I had seen, heard and been thinking about. Yes, we need more meaningful roles.

 

 

The Living School: Expulsion

This looks fascinating:

‘The first session of The Living School, a mobile project on questions of living together, will focus on the theme of The Expelled, and will include presentations by Jane Rendell and Irit Rogoff. They will consider the question of expulsion, eviction and displacement, giving a broader view onto the systematic upheaval of people. In addition, a participatory workshop called 'Gentrifiers Anonymous' will be led by the urban art collective zURBS, which will engage with the local neighbourhood and open up a dialogue between our own positionality and spatial politics.’ 

Unfortunately I only just found out about this and it takes place tomorrow – 12.00 – 18.00 in London, SE15 5DE.

More here about zURBS.

 

‘Thou shalt not ask’?

Recently I’ve had the privilege of meeting several clients of good neighbour schemes. I thought I’d share a couple of insights.

I met I man, I’ll call him Danny, who had experienced mental health difficulties for many years following crushing in a crowd incident, which left him so damaged and with so many broken bones that he was assumed dead. He now can’t face people very easily, yet spoke to me with a lively, if battered, intelligence. Vulnerable to encounters on a difficult estate – he’d had an intruder a few nights previously - he lives with his dog in dismal poverty. He could do his shopping on the internet but makes himself go out to get it, between three and four in the morning.

So how does he use the internet? His next door neighbour lets him use his wifi password. Isn’t that brilliant? I’d love to know about the conversation that led to this. Talking about poverty, Danny said it’s a blessing he has no relatives, Christmas would be such a trial if he had to buy things for people.

Danny told me he’d like to go and live at the sea-side. “Even if I lock myself away I could still open the window and see people.” When was the last time you saw the sea? “I’ve never seen the sea.”

“Without the helpers from the scheme, I don’t see anyone, except once a fortnight I see my mental health worker.”

The organiser told me he had said to her – obviously reluctant to make demands of the scheme,

“I need someone to come round once a fortnight, in case I die.”

This relates to the ‘request scruple’ – the reluctance to ask for help – which I have mentioned before with reference to the research of Lilian Linders. This arises also in the second instance. One woman who uses the scheme, I’ll call her Annie, talked about her hesitation:

“Why should they have the time for me? … I grew up the old-fashioned way, ‘thou shalt not ask’. It’s not pride. It’s just not proper. You don’t beg… I’m not feeling sorry for myself, I’m just frustrated because I can’t do the things I used to do.”

Following a serious fall, Annie needed help of various kinds, and first had to overcome the misunderstanding that the scheme was just about providing transport. She takes care not to risk over-demanding: “I work out what’s important, don’t pile it up.” She spoke with delight about how a simple bathroom shelf had made so many things easier for her.

Annie says she has learned that

“If you have a problem, talk to them about it. If they can’t help then they will tell you what you can do.”

This points to the importance of information-sharing and advice that arises in the way the schemes work. The scheme organiser told me it is not uncommon for people to assume they could make only one request of the scheme. Under this misconception they could be holding back from making a modest demand for help, reserving the option for the possibility of a more serious need in due course.

 

Community development and digital inclusion – SMILEY baseline report published

The baseline report for the SMILEY evaluation of community development and digital inclusion (Social Media Initiatives in Local East York), co-authored by Alison Gilchrist and myself, is now available here.

The report explores the results of a survey carried out in Derwenthorpe and the neighbouring areas of Tang Hall and Osbaldwick.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation is developing a programme to deliver digital inclusion interventions and support existing digital inclusion initiatives in these areas. Our role is to assess the impact of the programme activities, which are intended to support the development of social links and networks between residents within and between these three localities.

Our results suggest a sharp contrast between those who recognise and appreciate the potential of digital media to contribute to local life, and those who do not. We found that for almost half of those who have been involved in a local community issue, this has come about as a direct result of online contact ('once', 'a few times', or 'often'). But at the same time, a significant 40 per cent of respondents did not see any potential in local community uses of the internet, either through connecting with active local groups, or as a way of raising and influencing local issues.

In several respects we found that approximately 20 per cent of respondents seem to experience digital exclusion. For example,

• eighteen per cent say they are ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ comfortable trying out new digital technologies
• twenty-two per cent say they lack, or lack confidence in, their online digital skills
• one person in five does not expect that the internet could help them to keep in touch with friends or social contacts locally.

The baseline survey was conducted between November 2014 and January 2015. It was carried out by five community researchers in Derwenthorpe and the surrounding areas. Download the full report. There’s more on the SMILEY project here.

Our evaluation will go on to examine if and how JRF's interventions lead to the improvement of digital skills and literacy, generate a positive online identity for the area, and support community development and the integration of Derwenthorpe residents with neighbouring communities.

 

Getting by?

Back in the early 90s I got disillusioned with being part of a circus of people talking about those who experience exclusion, too frequently in their absence. I tried (largely unsuccessfully) to get funding for what I called ‘Voices’ projects, whereby people’s own experiences were recorded and this constituted the text, with or without context. At one point I had a list of eight or ten sub-projects, but funders could not be persuaded.

The nearest I came was with a project in Derry, Northern Ireland, but I don’t know what happened to the small amount of content created. More recently, I was part of a successful example, A series of doors, presenting the experiences of young people in poverty.

It’s tempting to say now that ‘Liverpool has done it’, because a range of Liverpuddlian agencies have worked together to produce the Getting by? report. And they’ve done it supremely well. Try and get your hands on the hard copy.

The project has documented 12 months in the lives of 30 families living in poverty in Liverpool where one or both parents are working. The website has included video clips as well as monitoring the political context and providing a clever connection between sources of help and advice, and the advisors’ take on the provision of that support.

The report shows what you’d expect: these families are invariably hard-working, financially astute, and often enormously resourceful, but still have insufficient means to raise themselves out of poverty. And these are families with paid employment.

The foreword quotes Beatrice Webb up-front:

‘Poverty is not due to a weakness of individual character, but is a problem of social structure and economic mismanagement.’

With a frankly unpromising general election in view, what chance that those who are in positions to do something about the social structure and the management of the economy will take any notice?

 

Understanding digital exclusion: homeless people

‘I think for young people WiFi is almost a human right. You want us to succeed in the world and achieve our potential but nowadays that means accessing the internet for everything and we should be able to do this in a private and quiet space not just the communal area of a shared hostel.’

This comes from a new Lemos and Crane report on access, use and benefits of digital technology for homeless and ex-homeless people. The research uses two related samples – a questionnaire survey (the Lemos & Crane sample) and a survey conducted by Groundswell peer researchers. There are one or two striking findings. For instance:

73% of the Lemos & Crane participants said they used the internet to keep in touch with family and friends.

That leaves a whopping 27 per cent who aren’t.

47% of the Groundswell participants agreed that the internet had information ‘which can make you paranoid’.

This may be explained partly by the wording of the question, which seems slightly leading, but it’s still an indication of a sense of vulnerability.

Participants typically felt confident using Facebook and other social media sites ‘but found office and word processing programmes difficult.’

‘The majority learned by teaching themselves. Only 8% learned through training provided at services, typically older participants.’

‘Problems included people posting unwanted pictures or comments on profiles, having profiles hacked and people finding them using Facebook with whom they no longer wanted contact. These specific concerns were mentioned by respondents across all age groups.’

Using an open question, the researchers found that participants expressed concerns about losing face-to-face contact with people:

‘There were two aspects of this concern: that loss of face-to-face contact would reduce levels of trust and connection between people, increasing isolation (67% of Groundswell respondents agreed that phones or computers stop people communicating properly) and that complex online systems would make accessing services more difficult.’

There’s a summary and a full report here (simple sign up required). (I recommend the full report as the summary shows signs of haste and lack of editing).

 

More than a quarter of all children in Europe are living in poverty

As the UK government does its best to erode the European project, here’s a very scary reminder of how much there is to do.

The latest EUKN report uses figures that measure poverty in terms of income, material deprivation - such as affording food, paying bills, sufficient heating etc - as well as living in a household of very low work intensity; and finds that 28 per cent of all children are living in poverty across Europe. If you don't find that disturbing, maybe think about it a little.

Poverty and social exclusion are increasing at a greater rate in cities than in rural areas. The report notes that ‘Even the prospect of a job does not erase urban poverty as shown by the increase in numbers of the “working poor”’. 

 

Social exclusion denial

Here’s another of those puzzling comments from a Social-Exclusion-Denier that seem to characterise our current elite…

According to Andy McSmith in the Indy, Liam Marshall-Ascough, a Conservative member of Crawley Borough Council in West Sussex, has obstructed a plan to introduce a food bank in the town hall, because he frankly does not think it is necessary:

'People aren’t in poverty in terms of going without food,' he tells the latest edition of the Crawley News. 'You try booking a restaurant in Crawley on a Friday or Saturday night. You can’t do it.'

His local restaurateurs won’t be best pleased at this discouragement of trade (if there are any of course: one literal explanation for his remark could be the complete absence of said facilities, but this seems unlikely).

More to the point, how do local residents feel about having a representative capable of such disarmingly irrational thought? In particular, how do those who didn’t vote for him feel about those who did?

This is hardly an isolated example – stories of bizarre thinking on the part of UKIP representatives are especially common these days (e.g.). Is this a trend peculiar to our age? Is it the consequence of effortless publicity, that means people with ideological incontinence leave their undigested waste in public so consistently?

I don’t mean to be rude

Sorting through some papers today, I came across a fieldwork note from a project I was evaluating a couple of years ago. It involved a bunch of young people looked after, on an outing with a hugely interesting environmentalist (among others). My note, verbatim:

Stuart had been talking about birds and wildlife for about 1.5 hrs when one of the girls (age about 15) said “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not really interested in birds.”

I posted about this outing at the time, reflecting on the sensitivity of the young people, who know all about the power of feelings and the way others tend to disregard them. There’s also a short article about the project here.

 

Welfare and the broadcast media: has something changed?

The other day I was contacted by a TV production company seeking my help in recruiting children and young people for a documentary programme about their experience of poverty. Obviously contacts like these are now subtly different, post-Benefits street: but in what way?

Would another production company dare to treat people who experience exclusion in the way the producers of Benefits street did? Well, yes, quite possibly.

There may be a different atmosphere now, but it does feel just like the no-brainer of press regulation, with plenty of empty words spouted so that journalists can go on manipulating disempowered people in the interests of corporate profit.

Against that, I would so much like there to be a broadcast of the voices and experiences of young people like those we reproduced in A series of doors. That could have some impact, and would be worth striving for. But don’t hold your breath, there isn’t going to be a TV version of A series of doors. I passed on the request in a neutral way, but I’ll be surprised if there are any takers.

There’s a question here about disregarding this opportunity as being ‘wrong channel’ – in two senses. First, I won’t reveal which TV channel is expected to broadcast the documentary, but it’s one which has done nothing to accumulate trust in the quality of its programmes. Secondly, is there an argument for turning backs on mainstream broadcast media – which, with a few exceptions, have let so many people down through callous, politicised and exploitative behaviour - in favour of all-out social media?

Will social media come to outplay TV, in spite of the well-known problems of trolls and trash, where issues of this kind are concerned? Does the Benefits street rumpus represent a watershed in the history of the popular politics of welfare, in which the great artilleries of the broadcast industries are finally discredited and the guerrilla style of social technologies might be seen, retrospectively at least, to right some wrongs? (OK, well let me have my moment of optimism, I need it).

If you’re sceptical about the role that media companies play in the creation of an uncaring society, you might want to glance over at the Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Sue Marsh has blogged in some detail about her experience in this respect. She makes clear that it’s not just the media companies: the government is playing a canny game by declining to debate welfare, as Marsh explains:

‘For some time now, the DWP and No.10 have refused to put anyone up against me. (and presumably other campaigners) at all. At first, 3 (all BBC) went ahead, but the various researchers were all genuinely shocked at the lack of government engagement. All said they'd never known such blanket refusals to debate an issue.

Perhaps more sinisterly, they were shocked that invariably the DWP refused to take part unless the stories were edited their way. Iain Duncan-Smith has written repeatedly and furiously to the BBC about their lack of balance in reporting welfare issues… it's clever isn't it? Refuse to debate at all and generally it will mean there can be no debate. You can shut down any and all opposition simply by saying nothing at all.’

It’s a bit sad that the researchers in question were so naïve as to be ‘shocked’ by the secretary of state's attitude, but that maybe tells us that the media bubble and the Westminster bubble don’t necessarily overlap. Sue finishes her post with what might be interpreted as a rallying cry around ‘social media if nowhere else’ so maybe my thoughts aren’t entirely misguided.

Finally on this theme, here’s the excellent Suzanne Moore writing about how ‘everything now starts from the prevailing Tory narrative that "welfare" is a luxury we can no longer afford’. She's right, and of course the use of the word 'luxury' is supremely, imperiously insulting to thousands of people who need support. Moore concludes:

‘None of the main parties represent a significant challenge to the idea that at the bottom of society a "culture of entitlement" exists. The culture of entitlement in reality exists at the top, in the form of sanctioned tax avoidance. But the supposed trickle down of wealth does not happen. Instead, there has been a trickle down of the attitudes of the wealthy: a disconnection from the state, mutual obligation and shared humanity.’

I just wonder, post-Benefits street, if there has been a significant attitude shift? If so, you wouldn’t expect politicians in the main parties to be among the first to notice.

 

The capture of opportunities by the rich at the expense of the rest

Some people think that Bill Gates is a jolly decent chap because he gives some of his wealth away. This is the same perverse thinking that celebrates philanthropy as it disempowers people in poverty. I’d like to live in a society where people question the systems and structures that allow half of the world’s wealth to be owned by just one percent of the population. The Oxfam report which publicises this statistic (speaking truth to Davos) makes the point:

‘Some economic inequality is essential to drive growth and progress, rewarding those with talent, hard earned skills, and the ambition to innovate and take entrepreneurial risks. However, the extreme levels of wealth concentration occurring today threaten to exclude hundreds of millions of people from realizing the benefits of their talents and hard work.’

It does look like we’re well-past the tipping point of ‘some economic inequality’ and we’re now into dangerous extremes. Oxfam note that:

‘over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues ranging from financial deregulation, tax havens, anti-competitive business practices to lower tax rates on high incomes and cuts in public services for the majority. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out of 30 countries for which data are available.’ (Guardian article)

And I weep for all the rights workers in the seventies and eighties who laboured to get equalities principles understood and acts of law passed. Now we have governments that routinely disdain equalities in pursuit of the re-feudalisation of society.

Is there much awareness, let alone discomfort, about this state of affairs? Is it true, as I suggested here, that 'most people don’t really notice, and some even believe them to be doing their best'? Maybe more awareness than I’d have suspected: the Guardian article refers to Oxfam’s survey research:

‘In the UK, some 67% agreed that "the rich have too much influence over where this country is headed" - 37% saying that they agreed "strongly" with the statement - against just 10% who disagreed, 2% of them strongly.’

George Monbiot, meanwhile, is asking whether the reason we’re all so indifferent about the abuses of power around us is because we’re satiated with comfort: too much freedom to be bothered about freedom.

Perhaps that’s part of it – certainly I don’t see how our cultural emphasis on consumption and celebrity can be regarded as healthy – but I wouldn’t want to lose sight of the issue of equalities. Oxfam are right to stress its centrality to social justice. There are people in positions of responsibility who spout the rhetoric of social justice who could appreciate that; but it's not in their interests, or those of their friends.

 

 

More weddings won't reduce poverty

There’s a peculiar argument that because there is a statistical association between single parenthood and poverty, the policy response should be to promote marriage (e.g.). Some influential folk on the right (e.g.) seem to relish this line of thinking because it gives them a sense of moral superiority coupled with a reason not to have to address the realities of poverty. People in poverty are so much easier to blame.

But it’s actually not that difficult to work out, as this Atlantic article by Emily Badger puts it:

‘Fractured family structures don't cause poverty. Poverty causes these family structures. Reduce poverty through more direct means, and we might actually reverse the retreat of marriage along the way.’

As she says, the basic logic ‘casts poverty as the result of a collapse in family values, not as the product of complex structural economic and social factors.’ Badger based her material on this article from the Council on Contemporary Families and quotes the Council’s researcher Kristi Williams:

‘We know marriage has a wide range of benefits, particularly for raising children. And it's not unreasonable to think that it would be nice if all children could enjoy these benefits. The problem is that there’s no evidence that the kind of marriages that poor, single parents enter into will have these same benefits.’

The article points to a range of research that helps explain why so many policy attempts to reassert traditional family structures have failed.

I accept that right wing policy makers in the UK today will struggle with the possibility that there might be a direction of causality contrary to the one they favour. But it’s just possible some light might penetrate the blinkers. Even Conservative Home thinks the minister for welfare and pensions should meet the Trussell Trust to discuss food banks. Poverty is actually quite an important issue, and to have povertyism practised consistently at a high level in policy thinking is disgraceful.

 

Libraries to accept food bank donations as fines

Trust ordinary people in the north to have worked this out: library users in St Helens are being given the option of paying any overdue fines with donations to food banks instead of cash. Since each library is now necessarily a collection and forwarding point, it follows that food donations, irrespective of loans and overdues, will come to them. I applaud that.

If this practice becomes widespread, as I hope it does (guess which councils won't touch it?) it means that at last the public library sector is playing a part in confronting the government over its wretched anti-public policies.

We have a government that regards the public library network as superfluous and food banks as unnecessary. It’s time for both of these ideological sugar-puffs to be not just subjected to occasional half-hearted challenge but forcefully confronted.

There’s a savage class war going on in this country. It was started, not by people in poverty or those experiencing exclusion, but by the Haves, on 31 March 2010. We can but hope that this year will see some deft and deep incisions like that proposed by St Helens Council into the repulsive flab (literal and metaphorical) that these people of wealth and power are so fond of flaunting.

 

Network capital, racial segregation and mobility

You don't often hear reference to the concept of network capital these days, which is odd since we're now firmly embedded in a network society, like it or not. But it's reappeared in an unlikely corner. It must be fifteen years since I heard Geoff Mulgan talking about the concept, but here's Mimi Scheller describing how it was crucial to the forms of resistance to slavery in the southern US.

Scheller argues that the institution of slavery can be seen as being defined 'by the exercise of control over mobility, and the immobility of an entire labour force... Almost all of the elements of network capital, ever since the founding of plantation regimes across the Americas, are more concentrated in white hands, and were denied to enslaved people and later to freed people.'

She goes on to talk about how

'The production of space through racial segregation of dwelling places and neighourhoods, of private and public spaces that are racially distinguished, of transit corridors and vehicles that have segregated use of them - all of these areas which became central within US politics and governance of mobility - are arenas of racial domination, racial privilege and demands for racial justice.'

Given my post-Mandela note the other day about the demographics of London bus travel, and given the whiteness of privileged forms of transport that she refers to, this seems a salient and resonant theme. Maybe it is worth reconsidering the potent 1956 image of Rosa Parks on the Montgomery bus in terms of network capital - reflecting on the fact that it was an orchestrated event, that there was a photographer and that that is a reporter sat behind her. The civil rights movement had had to fight first to establish some network capital and learned to exploit it. Mobility was a key factor in that struggle just as Mandela's immobility was a factor which worked first in the interests of, and then against, apartheid.

I humbly suggest that Scheller's video might be a good use of ten minutes of your time. She was co-founder with John Urry of CeMoRe, the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster, and I'm not likely to forget the privilege of having been present at their memorable launch conference in about 2005.

The economic geography of povertyism

JRF have just published a report showing that

• Cuts in spending power and budgeted spend are systematically greater in more deprived local authorities than in more affluent ones, with a difference of around £100 per head in both England and Scotland.
• Deprived authorities have seen greater reductions in spending power (down by 21.4%) than affluent ones (down by 15.8%).

‘There is a real risk that an increased targeting of services on the most vulnerable groups will undermine the capacity of local authorities to provide a broad range of services across the social spectrum. In turn, this will undermine the willingness of council tax payers who do not rely on these services to continue paying for them.’

Hands up who still doesn't think this is strategic and systematic on the part of the Tory Haves?

 

Silver lining

A ‘friendship’ helpline for older people, called The Silver Line, has been launched. It uses specially trained volunteers to:

• Offer information, friendship and advice
• Link callers to local groups and services
• Offer regular befriending calls
• Protect and support those who are suffering abuse and neglect.

I think the subtle allusion in the title is brilliant. I’m pleased to see they will make calls as well as receive them. The ability to link callers to local groups is going to be heavily dependent on the national charities with local branches, since the structure of local CVSs has been so decimated that even where they still exist, their connections with independent groups is often tenuous or fortuitous.

I’d like to see the service gradually localised, so that helpline staff are more likely to recognise some of the things that callers are talking about. Geography and places can be useful conversation hangers.  

 

The point about the weather: postponing the 'heat or eat' dilemma

Here in the UK we are experiencing unusually warm weather for the time of year. As a pedestrian I listen to and occasionally watch quite a few weather forecasts. And yet in all the banter that generally precedes and follows the meteorologists' ritual sharing of wisdom, not once have I heard mention of what seems to me to be the most important point about this warm spell...

So let me make it here: it means that many people in poverty will be able to eat, perhaps properly, for a while longer, since they will be spending less than usual for the time of year on heating.

We are living through a time of unambiguously policy-inflicted poverty. Many people newly in this situation would never have anticipated that such a plight could afflict them.

Poverty is hard enough without also knowing that much of it would be avoidable but for the perverse and unashamed malice of a bunch of ideologically-infected power-mongers. It would be reassuring to think the weather would be forever against them; and other forces too.

Making the links: poverty, ethnicity and social networks

JRF have published a piece of research on the links between poverty and ethnicity, which examines how social networks help or hinder people in moving out of poverty. I was involved in the study in a partnership led by the Third Sector Research Centre. Among the key findings:

• People’s social networks were shaped by factors including ethnicity, class and gender, but personal characteristics, such as confidence, were also important in developing useful connections. Family and friends were seen as the basis for most relationships but there were low levels of awareness about wider social networks and how they might be used for moving on from poverty.
• People’s links beyond their own ethnic community were important, but the added dimension of racism could prevent access to ‘mainstream’ influential networks.
• Social networks tended to be ‘like with like’, so while they were used to access employment, this was often into low-paid jobs which relied on informal recruitment processes.
• Strong bonds with family and friends helped mitigate the effects of poverty. However, developing bridging and linking ties with networks that could move people on from poverty involved risks and scarce energy and resources.
• Voluntary, community and faith based organisations were seen as important for facilitating access to cross-cultural networks.
• There were examples of good practice in agencies encouraging people to consider how their social networks could help them move out of poverty. However, there was no consistency in practice between agencies.

There’s a four-page summary here. The full report is here, and if I may say so, well worth a read.

The other members of the team were Alison Gilchrist, Angus McCabe, Asif Afridi and Paul Kyprianou. This is the place for me to record that, taking into account all the consortia and partnership work I’ve been involved in over the past thirty years – where relationships with co-conspirators have meant a great deal to me and almost invariably been rewarding - it’s been an outstanding privilege to work with such a genial and inspiring group of people. I hope our work has some impact and leads onto other things.

 

Loneliness and older people: where are the frameworks that can stimulate informal connections to protect older people against loneliness?

On Friday the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt drew attention to the high numbers of people characterised by the Campaign to End Loneliness as ‘chronically lonely.’ This coincides with publication of a BBC survey, which claims that half of all adults in England experience loneliness. (The data from the survey are here (for England) and here (for GB)). The debate inevitably focused on older people, and I wonder sometimes about the loneliness of many people in late middle age.

Curious Point No.1. The Health Secretary rightly described the way we treat older people as a ‘national shame.’ He compared it to Asian cultures, where there is ‘reverence and respect for older people’ and ‘residential care is a last rather than a first option.’ Where this is the case, it makes sense to highlight it as desirable; although it wouldn’t be wise to take the comparison with Chinese culture (which is specifically referred to) too far, I think.

Take this study for instance, which finds little difference in the experience of ageing among older people in Shanghai and Canada. And then there's this UK study which found a high level of expectation for family support amongst Asian-Indian respondents, but Mr Hunt won't want to hear that this coexists with a high level of expectation for state support and an acknowledgement that the ideal of family support may not always materialise. He argued that we need to ‘restore and reinvigorate the social contract between generations.’ Indeed: so can we have a policy debate about how we do that?

Curious Point No.2. The Labour Party’s response to the speech includes this statement:

‘Families, friends and neighbours need a decent care system to back up their efforts to look after elderly people, but the reality is our care system is in crisis and has been pushed to the brink of collapse.’

I think there is plenty of truth in that; but it hardly excuses the last two Labour administrations for failing to take seriously the issue of an ageing population and for disregarding the accumulating social problems associated with the growing demand for care. Fifteen years ago it was urgent: now it is critical.

Curious Point No.3. While these news items were being churned I was in a breakfast seminar at the dear old Grauniad, on the topic of social capital and the voluntary sector. A bit passé, you might think. Surprisingly, most of the speakers fell plop into the puddle of implying that social capital = the result of what vol orgs do. Er, there must be some other sources of s.c. they could be helping with?

Debbie Ladds from the Local Trust rescued things a little by mentioning the value of setting up tea and cake sessions at local level – an example of something that works because the connections made and reinforced there are the ones that, as capital, can be invested and can bring returns. But this sort of potential remained unexplored and there was no other recognition of how informal interactions can be stimulated. Cue the same question for the Secretary of State for Health: where are the frameworks that can stimulate informal connections to protect older people against loneliness?

Ah, OK then, well cue Geoff Mulgan instead. At about the same time on Friday, over what used to be called the airwaves, he offered one suggestion on the Today programme (from 2:33:30, available for a few more days. Thanks Martin for the heads-up) suggesting that the energy within the Neighbourhood Watch network could be diverted to help look after older people who experience loneliness. I’m sure this already happens in some places informally; it might make sense to give it a formal basis, without jeopardising the informality of interaction of course.

Curious Point No.4. During the Today discussion Anthea Tinker (whose solid 1981 book on Elderly people in modern society sits right beside my desk at the moment), made the point that there are questionable assumptions about how family-oriented cultures (such as those in southern Europe) protect older people against loneliness. By way of extending the argument, consider this European research, which suggests that feelings of loneliness

‘were more prevalent in areas where living alone was rarest and where community bonds were strongest. Individual variables describing life situation did not explain the differences.’ (Emphasis added)

And finally, Curious Point No.5. The findings of the BBC survey suggest that people who practise a religion feel lonelier than those who do not; and are more likely than those with no faith to say they are experiencing greater levels of loneliness than they did ten years ago. This might be altogether unsurprising: long-held assumptions about the well-being benefits attributed to religiosity have been questioned in other respects (e.g.). I wonder if there is also something there about a proportional increase over the past decade in membership and influence of hierarchical religions (e.g. Catholicism, Islam) compared to non-hierarchical religions? Just a thought.

 

Moral poverty and the Archangel of Arrogance

There’s been a sudden wintry chill in the weather here in south east England. I lay in bed the other night anticipating the winter and reflecting that I have a home that is reasonably efficient, I can keep warm and I expect to have enough to eat. Many thousands won’t, but I’m lucky. It’s a series of chances in my life – a few of which I may have been able to capitalise on to a small extent – that gives me relative comfort compared to those who are not lucky.

I then wondered why some people attribute their own fortune to their own merit. Many people on the right probably lie in bed thinking ‘I deserve this, I’ve earned it. And those who don’t have a warm home and good food at their table simply don’t deserve it.’ It seems odd, but this attitude is commonly expressed in the media coming directly from the present government.

Is there any articulated attitude that more clearly represents true arrogance?

Step forward the Archangel of Arrogance, to provide a resonant example. Michael Gove, secretary of state for education, a man who is not best able to manage his thoughts, has been talking about people who use food banks:

"I had the opportunity to visit a food bank in my constituency only on Friday and I appreciate that there are families who do face considerable pressures.

"It's often as a result of some decisions that have been taken by those families which mean that they are not best able to manage their finances.”

This is arrogance of the highest order, the kind that allows the proponent to claim authority on all sorts of matters at a whim. In this case it shines with moral zeal, it glistens with the oleaginous self-satisfaction of the true ideological dangerman, bent on the refeudalisation of England.

And finally, a little moral coda. Seeking wider coverage of this story, I went to the Telegraph website and entered ‘michael gove food banks’ into the search box. Well you never know, they might have reported his riposte. This is what I was offered:

Food and drink homepage

www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/wine/

Surprise! The bedroom tax might just be a scam

This morning the Indy published evidence that the bedroom tax is what they call a ‘big lie’.

‘The Government’s justification for its controversial “bedroom tax” has been debunked by new figures showing that up to 96 per cent of those affected have, in effect, nowhere to move.

The figures published today in The Independent expose the false argument behind ministerial attempts to spin the move as ending the “spare-room subsidy”, and confirm campaigners’ claims that it merely penalises poor people...

More than 19 out of 20 families hit by the bedroom tax are trapped in their larger homes because there is nowhere smaller within the local social housing stock to take them.’

No surprise there. Once again we have the prime minister and the minister for work and pensions exposed as deeply unpleasant people, more concerned to demonstrate their readiness to make things worse for people in poverty than to come up with policies having some kind of rational justification to improve our society.

But this still constitutes news and good journalism. The important point about this story is that you are likely to have missed it. I haven’t carried out a wide search, but it’s striking that there is no mention of it on the BBC website.

The Beeb, inevitably cowed by accusations of anti-government bias, is not going to carry a story like this, any more than the right-wing press will do. And so this inventive government is allowed to carry on with its evidence-free, grotesquely malicious and repressive policies, because most people don’t really notice, and some even believe them to be doing their best.

The bedroom tax is a device whose unambiguous effect will be to increase and deepen social exclusion in a pretty straightforward way. That's never been in doubt. Unfortunately the perpetrators of this bizarre legislation apparently do not have the intelligence to understand that inequality is much more expensive for a society than is equality. What they do have is a stupefying arrogance that enables them to ignore and deride people who would point that out to them.

 

The financial cost of child poverty

No surprise that the topic of child poverty keeps cropping up. The Child Poverty Action Group has today published figures on the financial costs of this accelerating social crisis, noting a total cost to the UK of £29 billion per year. This figure includes:

• £15 billion spent on services to deal with consequences of child poverty

• £3.5 billion lost in tax receipts from people earning less as a result of having grown up in poverty
• £2 billion spent on benefits for people spending more time out of work as a result of having grown up in poverty
• £8.5 billion lost to individuals in net earnings (after paying tax). 

It’s a serious challenge that requires an urgent response. So what do we get? Instead of confronting the problem, the government, in possibly its most reckless move yet, is today reported to be

‘planning to allow outsourcing firms to bid for contracts to manage social services for vulnerable children in England – while dropping laws allowing the removal of companies that fail to do the job properly.’

This is truly scary and desperately irresponsible. No matter that the evidence is overwhelming in showing that privatisation costs more and leads to a decline in quality and values (think Serco, G4S, A4E, the railway so-called-service-providers, the utility companies…). There are reasons why we have public services, but the rationale is probably a bit too complex for people educated in public schools.

 

‘A series of doors’: young people talking about the experience of poverty

Some months ago I mentioned a piece of work in which I designed and co-facilitated a consultative event with children and young people in poverty. The recruitment was intricate but it paid off: the participants were thoughtful, articulate, provocative and insightful. My colleagues and I at Breslin Public Policy made a commitment to help get their views into the public domain, and we have now done so: today we published a paper called A Series of Doors: young people talking about their experience of poverty. 

The title is distinctive. It comes from a telling remark made by one of the young participants, who observed that:

‘The more problems people have, the less likely they are to be supported out of poverty. It is like a series of doors. One door is being poor, another door is being autistic, another door is being a young carer, another door is living in a bad area… The more doors there are, the more keys are needed to open them and people don’t care enough to make the effort to open them all.’

I urge you to read and reflect on the paper, to circulate it widely, and to let us have your thoughts. The energy and honesty of these young people deserves close and sincere support from all who have the power to help make a difference to their lives, and the lives of others like them.

We hope to launch the document with an event and hard copies available, in the autumn: please get in touch if you’d like to be involved. We’d particularly like to hear if you think you can sponsor the travel of one or more of the young people to such an event: it’s their voices that matter most. Please consider it.

 

Care in the community - it has to be reliable

A couple of weeks ago, with reference to the case of Ariel Castro, I was wondering if

‘Maybe we need to put more effort into pre-emptive services for all kinds of mental ill-health; and to normalise or de-stigmatise the idea of consulting them.’

It's critical that people who fear they could harm others should know that help is available. Care in the community has to mean genuine formal and informal support, and not just one or the other. And as this poignant story in Saturday’s Guardian illustrates, it has to be genuinely available. Sean Clifton, who has a history of schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder, apparently obeyed commands in his head ‘to seek out the "prettiest girl in the mall" and go and stab her.’ We are told that earlier that day,

‘He went to the emergency ward of the local psychiatric hospital and asked for help. "But they didn't take me seriously. I asked if I could just sit down and have a cup of coffee and talk a little and get it off my chest. But they were all too busy to listen."’

Years later his victim said:

‘If I have any anger, it is that the system failed him that day.’

As I’ve said, I think future societies will look back on our primitive disinterest in mental health with distaste. The full story of Sean Clifton as told illustrates a wonderful support system (carefully hidden from public view) once the diagnosis and admission was in place. But we need reliable services available locally at all times, in the first place, to accommodate the fact that mental ill-health is widely experienced, varies enormously and is potentially very dangerous. Sometimes, post-welfare capitalism feels torridly anti-compassionate.

 

Poverty in the suburbs

Since the global economy went wonky in 2008 I’ve been noticing plenty of signs where poverty becomes apparent in previously unexpected places. Comfortable looking estates and smug blocks of flats with the mild signs of decay, here and there, the wrong peeling of paper, half-hearted front doors and crap on the lawn, and households dropping off the pointed pace of consumer life, some of us end up looking like disoriented ragged joggers who have strayed onto the track in the Olympic 10k final.

Now here’s an article in Cities today on the evidence of suburban poverty in the US. It covers the work of researchers Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone, who stress the importance of regional responses because anti-poverty policies designed for dense urban areas ‘transplant poorly onto suburbia’:

‘We’ve seen that the suburban safety net – it’s much thinner, it’s much patchier, and it’s spread over greater distances.’

There’s also a reference to the part played by transport systems in the coming period:

‘It's significantly harder to address poverty through transportation when low-income households in need of it live dispersed over larger areas. Suburbs also simply lack the built-in networks of service providers that have grown up over decades in inner-city communities.’

I will go on pointing out, because I think it's important to do so, that in the UK this austerity is at best unnecessary and a puerile, and very nasty, form of ideological folly. Who can possibly need more evidence? I was speaking last week to someone who still thought that austerity economics was a justifiable response to ‘Labour’s excessive spending.’ Sigh.

 

Being honest about poverty statistics

So in Wales they have appointed a ‘Poverty Minister,’ the excellent Huw Lewis. His aim is to ensure that the government machine ‘turns to face the people caught up in the poverty statistics.’

Ah yes, when it comes to addressing poverty statistics, the rest of the UK gets this chap, known for his use of what Fry would call ‘terminological inexactitude’ regarding statistics.

Living in interesting times

England seems to be shifting from being a rather right-wing country to a frighteningly right-wing country. JRF research published the other day shows not just that ‘the public has become increasingly likely to say that individual characteristics rather than societal issues cause poverty;’ but also that this is largely accounted for by a shift in attitudes among voters on the left. In 1986 the proportion of Labour voters who cited social injustice as the main cause of poverty was 41 per cent: in 2011 it was just 27 per cent.

Never mind, let’s see what’s in the news to cheer us up. How about this? A brand new UK Independence Party councillor, Eric Kitson, has made racist ‘jokes’ and shared ‘a cartoon of Muslim people being burnt at the stake with copies of the Koran fuelling the flames’, on his Facebook page. The following sentence seems to be his explanation for why Ukip have not suspended him:

‘I'm not a politician - I'm a bit of a fool really.’

Meanwhile, Colin Brewer, the previously mentioned independent councillor in Cornwall who said that disabled children should be put down, apparently was re-elected in the same round of elections: according to the Indy, ‘with 335 votes – a winning margin of four votes.’ Brewer compared disabled children with deformed lambs that are dealt with at birth by ‘smashing them against a wall.’ His presence on the candidate list would certainly get me out to the polling station.

In both cases, I’m perversely curious about whether some voters put their cross against these names without at least some understanding of what they stood for. The logic of democracy means that you have to believe that a majority of those who voted for these people knew what they were doing. Something is very rotten in the state of England.

 

Education, segregation, and social damage

Here's Will Hutton in today's Observer, summarising the social damage wrought by elitist educational and economic policies:

"Societies are built on multiple interdependencies. Trust, the foundation of human relationships, is created around reciprocity. An elite that segregates itself is declaring it does not want to be part of reciprocal relationships of trust. All that matters is its own betterment. Entrepreneurship and innovation, as entrepreneurs and innovators know full well, happen best in a climate of openness, access and high trust, not in societies managed to deliver economic rent and advantage to a self-perpetuating oligarchy of the privately educated."

And at the local level, the gated community is an increasingly powerful symbol of all this comtemptible ideology promoted by this government and its largely conniving press.

The social networks of refugees

A research report on Social networks, social capital and refugee integration has just been published by the universities of Birmingham and Cardiff. The study was based on an analysis of The Survey of New Refugees (SNR), augmented with a short online survey.

Among the findings:

• Social connections have a clear impact on health and language.
• Those who participate in quality English language learning get more help and have more frequent contact.
• There were clear social capital benefits from family reunion.
• Frequent contact with kin has no impact on access to employment.
• Those in contact with a formal group are less likely to need emotional support.
• No kind of social network is anti-integrative.

And there are a couple of surprises (to me at any rate). First, there seems to be comparatively low interest in associating with ‘co-national or ethnic groups’. When asked to rank 15 priorities, respondents placed greatest importance (understandably) on ‘Absence of verbal or physical attack’ (9.5) and ‘Housing’ (9.29). The lowest priority was accorded to ‘Volunteering’ (7.09) (understandably); and (surprisingly) association with ‘co-national or ethnic groups’ (7.49).

Secondly, the research challenges the model which suggests that if you spend time and energy investing in strong ties (e.g. for emotional support) that detracts from investment in weak ties and bridging social capital (e.g. for getting work). The researchers say there was ‘no evidence that having strong kin networks precludes getting support from formal networks’:

‘The positive correlations between different types of contact… provide compelling evidence against the argument that immigrant and ethnic minority communities are ‘inward looking’ and only ‘invest’ in bonding social capital... There is no evidence that receiving help from relatives and friends (widely considered as ‘bonding’ capital) is mutually exclusive with gaining ‘bridging’ social capital from ‘out-groups’ and more formal organisations.’ (p11-12)

 

Exclusion and protest: people left out in the street can make a difference

Yesterday, as various sources report (BBC, Indy), five disabled people lost their High Court challenge over the government's decision to abolish the Independent Living Fund (ILF). Only from Zoe Williams’s less resigned account in the Guardian do we learn that:

‘It's an inaccessible courtroom, so the people who brought the action couldn't get into the room to hear the verdict.’

What an exquisite vignette for the moral bankruptcy of the system. Can the injustice of British politics and the notion of British ‘justice’ sink any lower? We must wait and see. Matt Kenyon’s superb illustration brings a weird sound, a bit like laughter, to the cries of derision.

But there are sources of encouragement. According to Andreas Whittam Smith in today's Indy, action by those victimised across Europe by authorities in the name of ‘austerity’ has brought results:

‘When the President of the European Commission says that austerity has reached its limits, then something profound has changed. The street protests in weaker eurozone countries have made a difference.’

Plenty still to do though.

‘No life.’ Young people talking about poverty

Last month I helped organise and run an event involving children and young people in poverty, so that government officials could hear them talk about their experiences.

The slightly formal context of a conference venue was going to be unfamiliar for the participants, the timetable was very tight, and they would not know most of the others there. So we designed a mix of plenary and group sessions, exercises, discussions, and one short presentation; followed by a trip round the houses of parliament. We also had to take account of the fact that some of the young people had fairly complex backgrounds and there was always a chance that attention spans would be short and their behaviour could be what is euphemistically called ‘challenging’.

One of the exercises was designed to allow some of the experience to be fictionalised: this gave the participants ‘permission’ to release some fairly strong concerns – and some personal aspirations - that otherwise might not have been shared. This post summarises that process.

We had seven groups of about 5 or 6 per table, of mixed ages. Using a pre-printed worksheet, each group was asked to invent a character and describe their family background and the area where they lived. Prompt cards were provided but only the age of the child was prescribed, in order to ensure a variety.

We used the carousel principle so that each table inherited the character created by others. The second stage required them to think about the skills, interests, fears and friendships of the character. We provided plenty of prompt cards for this stage, covering a broad mix of options to get people talking: some groups used these while others chose to draw or write, for example -

Fears: ‘not being able to leave the estate’

‘A bit afraid of new people. Doesn’t know what is happening.’

‘He does not go to school so he don’t have a good ajication.’

They all offered a reasonable degree of consistency – that is to say, there were only a few apparent contradictions along the lines of ‘loner’ / ‘team player’.

In the next stage, inheriting a character with some detail known about them, the participants were asked to think up a crisis (or crises) that affected the individual, and to describe the implications. As we had anticipated, this gave them no difficulties whatsoever, although there were one or two oddities –

‘No life. Goes into foster home & runs away. Police find him and Bob wants to stay with the policeman.’

‘They move to a small stone hut.’

There was plenty of mention of adults in the household losing their jobs, plus imprisonment and quite unceremonially reported death.

In the last group phase, they were asked to think through the future for the invented character they inherited, given what was known about their circumstances and the crisis which afflicted them. Here, what was striking was the sense of resilience in some of the outcomes (but not all):

‘Finally he got his own business. And he doesn’t do any illgele job.’

‘(After 1 yr) Taken into care. Social involved. Abused in care. Bunking school. Mum + Dad not aloud to see them. Parents in rehab. Angry at parents. (After 2 yrs) Kills parents -Juvinal prison – No one to help him. (After 5 yrs) Turns life around and starts studying in Safe Children’s Home. Goes back to school and doesn’t get bullied.’

‘She become so ill and suffers too much. Luckily someone adopts her but she is so ill that she dies.’

‘(After 1 yr) out of prison after serving 6 months. No family support L (After 2 yrs) goes back to prison for selling drugs, couldn’t find work. (After 5 yrs) Dies from drug abuse. [Alternative happy ending] 1 yr – lots of support from family. 2 yrs – rehab and courses. 5 yrs – police and youth work, educating others to prevent them doing the same thing.’

The final phase of the exercise was a table-by-table account and short discussion of each of the characters. Unsurprisingly, energy levels had flagged a little by this stage but the richness of the narratives gave us plenty to work on in the final sessions and in our report, which will be published soon by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

If you're interested in finding out more about the process described here, please get in touch.

 

Money on our minds

Today I played my part in an established neighbourhood ritual, as signatory witness with my neighbour to counting the money from charity envelopes collected. There are just fourteen houses and, remarkably, she had managed to get a response from all but one; we hit the record with well over £4 per household. The cause was a popular one, and when people decide to be generous, they are generous.

Everyone seems to have money on their minds these days: how much they have, the predictability of their income, and what to do with it. And I sense that more and more people – in spite of the conspiracy of disinterest shown by most of the broadcast media - are beginning to get the message that poverty is a dominant, complex social problem. There has been a significant political shift lately, and tomorrow’s budget ought to bring some relief; but undoubtedly profound, lasting damage has been done, much of it inexcusably ideologically-driven and malicious.

Some people, like Bradley Ariza who has an article in today’s Guardian, are counting calories too. As he says, ‘not to lose weight, but to try and make sure I get enough.’

‘The problem is that as soon as we try to work our way out of the grip of the welfare state, we lose so many benefits, and incur so many other costs; transport, childcare etc. Yet instead of helping people, there seems to be this obsession with punishing those on benefits, as if being poor is some sort of crime.’

Previously:

Poverty: curtains or blinkers?

Political stereotyping of poverty

Povertyism in policy: 'troubled families'

The language of povertyism

It's the povertyism, stupid

It's the poverty, stupid

Equalities matter: not later, now

In October 2011, Colin Brewer, an independent councillor in Cornwall, told a disability services worker at an equalities event at County Hall that he thought disabled children ‘should be put down.’ The man has apologised but, mystifyingly, says

‘I don't think I have done anything wrong.’

Personally I don’t think people with such views should themselves be put down, but I’m willing to discuss the question in a civilised manner if you like.

When the dust has settled, policy makers need to look at the dates here. It’s now February 2013, so it has taken our society 16 months to bring this man just this close to the necessary public retribution.

Beyond the individual disgrace, there is a wider public disgrace: why do we have public institutions that do not treat such issues with sufficient seriousness to disinfect themselves with a more rigorous urgency? Do equalities somehow not matter?

 

Food banks and inequality

‘Food banks are the safety net of safety nets. It is only when government fails that food banks have to step in… They are not a substitute for social policies that protect people’ - Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, speaking in London recently, cited by Patrick Butler.

De Schutter said that widening economic and geographic inequalities in western countries such as the UK were reinforcing the existence in deprived neighbourhoods of ‘food deserts’ – places with few shops and where cheap, healthy produce was hard to come by.

The question arises in this context, is it morally defensible for a government to adopt policies that demonstrably increase economic inequalities to exacerbate the situation? I find it hard to think of anything more offensive right now.

As far as I can tell, the Guardian is the only major news broadcaster to cover this story – presumably the other sources do not regard it as important.

Meanwhile, I find it curious that this government – usually so determinedly disinterested in evidence of any kind – has initiated research which ‘will examine the extent and effectiveness of emergency food aid, amid concern that increasing numbers of low-paid and benefit-dependent households are forced to use charity food sources’. So they’ve spotted that there is ‘concern’, well done there. I can find no reference to the inquiry on the Defra site so far. I suspect they’re cautiously checking the morality of applying the ‘big society’ brand in this case (seriously: see the first 30 secs here).

Child poverty and family stability

Last week I designed and helped to run a day long consultation event with about 40 children and young people in poverty. Once we've processed the mass of content, I'll try to blog in more detail, but here I thought I'd comment on a couple of the more striking issues that emerged.  

The event was designed to feed in to the government’s consultation on child poverty (now closed) around which, as the Guardian highlighted last week, there has been a degree of tension. The idea that Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, should be credited with a ‘theory that other factors aside from money caused poverty’ is odd. Apparently he is challenging ‘the tired arguments that poverty was about income alone,’ but no-one I have spoken to knows where to find those arguments.

Obviously the question is not whether there are other factors, but how they are emphasised. You’d only ask ‘is child poverty about money or not?’ if you had a pitifully weak grasp of what it is. Of course it’s about money. It's also about of lot of other things – like access to transport, health inequalities, network poverty, lack of cultural capital, environmental poverty, poverty of opportunity and so on - which are exacerbated by lack of money. Perhaps also it still needs to be pointed out that wide wealth inequalities are wasteful and have all sorts of negative human and social consequences, which are expensive.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of evidenced support in our event for the government’s idea that family stability is a key factor.

Except, wait. There was one feature of the lives of participants in the event which could strongly affect family stability, and which kept coming up: death. It was surprising how frequently death was mentioned - of someone known to the participant or in the fictionalised scenarios they developed collectively. It may be that we helped to create an environment which allowed this theme to emerge more easily than it does in other contexts, I don’t know, but it was striking. Death in poor families can be particularly devastating in both emotional and economic terms, the more so if young people are dealing with unusual frequencies of death among relatives and family friends.

Ah yes wait, I’m forgetting, there was something else that impacts on family stability, which kept coming up: imprisonment. The realities of someone they knew being imprisoned were clearly not too far away from the day to day lives of these young people to be dismissed. And some were acutely aware of the obstacles to rebuilding their lives that anyone could expect to be presented after a sentence has been served. There seemed to be genuine fear of the very idea of prison as a dead end to be avoided.

Less obvious as a factor having an indirect impact on family stability were the numerous remarks about transition stages – especially the moment of leaving care, which can be far too abrupt for many young people, due simply to inadequate levels of support (this is an example, one among several that we heard, of service poverty). One young man described how, at the age of 18, he felt ‘like a ball being kicked off the park’.

So I’m starting to come round to the view that family stability does offer a way of gaining closer understanding of child poverty, although not so much as a causal factor. It may be that it is a sub-theme which usefully helps us focus on a number of influential poverties; like health inequalities, service poverty, low cultural capital and poverty of opportunity.

 

Starting to get serious: how we treat asylum seekers

It’s fairly routine to come across a report of a working party or an official inquiry that laments certain conditions that were found. Of course, if an investigation or inquiry is set up with busy (and sometimes expensive) people deliberating, we’re not going to be surprised if there proves to be a good reason for it.

But occasionally the reality that an inquiry discovers is so disturbing that it deserves wider attention, and should command that attention.

Today saw the publication of one example, from the cross-party parliamentary inquiry into asylum support for children and young people. Former children’s minister Sarah Teather, who chaired the inquiry, said

‘The evidence we have heard is shocking and appalling. It is an affront to this country’s proud tradition of giving sanctuary to those fleeing danger and violence.’

For the Children’s Society, Matthew Reed said:

‘Children and their families are being forced to live in appalling conditions that are unacceptable by anybody’s standards. No child, no matter who they are or where they’re from, should be treated with such a complete lack of human dignity.’

It sounds pretty serious to me. I don’t want to live in a society in which vulnerable families are separated routinely and people are treated like this:

‘The inquiry received evidence documenting reports of eggs thrown at houses, stones thrown at babies and children hounded from school. Evidence details how flats where asylum seekers lived were targeted in arson attacks; in one case a man begged to leave the area after a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of his home. The most extreme form of this violence has been the murder of asylum seekers in cities across the UK.’

Fortunately, the system is not always the end of the line:

‘One woman started to go into labour, did not have a midwife, did not know where the hospital was, and it was only the kindness of strangers in the street that got her to hospital.’

Is that what’s known as big society? It’s hardly contentious to point out that the Tory rhetoric of ‘benefit scroungers’ is at best unhelpful and in practice likely to be a consistent contributory factor here. The report notes that

‘Some segments of the population, including some frontline professionals and statutory agencies, have vastly inaccurate ideas about asylum seekers and the reality of their lives. This has fuelled a hostile reception for many thousands of children and young people, desperate to live in peace and safety.’ (Emphasis added)

And as if the evidence were not bad enough, its publication surfaces another distasteful feature of contemporary life – the inevitable trolls who see no reason, hear no reason, and speak no reason; for whom it is easier to dismiss this systematic inhumanity as ‘self-inflicted destitution’ (you can find examples in the comments section here). It’s scary when people are insistently wrong about these issues; when they also seem to take pride in being devoid of any kind of compassion it’s close to terrifying.

Family stability is not a measure of child poverty

As I’m working on two poverty-related projects at the moment, one of which is aimed directly at the government’s consultation on measuring child poverty, I was intrigued to read the Poverty and Social Exclusion research team’s paper slamming the consultation document (deadline 15 February), which it describes as being ‘of very poor quality’.

The paper includes the PSE team's responses to the consultation. Given the tendency in some policy circles to try to associate poverty with certain kinds of family, and to distance it from the structural effects of policy decisions, I particularly appreciated this note:

Q21: Which experiences associated with family stability should be captured in a measure?

None. Again family stability is not a measure of child poverty. Neither is family structure. Most poor children live in two-parent families. There is a higher risk of child poverty in lone parent and cohabiting families but this is a function of our social policy in the UK…

 

Towers or not, could we please have decent housing? (And get on with it)

There doesn’t seem to be much chance of the economy being stimulated to get the badly needed house-building underway (most cabinet ministers have got enough for the time being), so it’s a good time to give the housing industry something to do. The Policy Exchange calls for the widespread demolition of tower blocks.

I’ve spoken to quite a few people who love living the high life, but if the PX findings from their recent study are accurate, then there are clearly too many children and young people cooped up in box flats too far from the outdoors. They claim that:

• 52,000 households with children who are social renters live on the third floor or above (40,000 of which are in London)
• 20,000 households with children who are social renters live on the fifth floor or above (16,000 of which are in London).

The argument may need a little more nuanced understanding. The press release says that:

‘Studies have shown that residents of high-rise blocks or large estates suffer from more stress, mental health difficulties, neurosis and marriage breakdowns’

- and it’s worth asking about the extent to which these dysfunctions might be caused by, exacerbated by, or coincidental to, the housing conditions. Do they occur to a statistically significant extent in well-designed, well-built, well-maintained towers?

Meanwhile, we seem to be witnessing an increase in the construction of highly secure high-rise buildings for the wealthy. Is a pattern going to emerge, the posh with their heads in the clouds and the plebs brought down to earth? 

Perhaps we need to emphasise that design and build quality really must be part of the argument. It’s all very well calling for low rise, but maybe this image can serve as a reminder that bad low rise can be problematic.

It would help to breathe life back into the archived CABE (decommissioned by the present government in 2011), because this was their business. It seems to me to be hard for the present government to escape the charge that they have squandered previous progress on decent homes standards.

 

It's free

Snow across the country the past few days. And here's a text from a young muslim mother in poverty, with whom I've been corresponding - 'I was hoping to have a lie in today (wishful thinking!). We've been out in the snow every day since friday, [the children] were up @7am asking what time we could head out!'

And I thought, rather weakly, that's it - the snow is a delight in its own terms and it's free. For once, something pleasurable in this country that is not reserved for the Haves (although it helps to have decent clothes and a way to dry off, to warm up afterwards, and replenish with quality calories...)

 

No home-like place (updated)

Do some reflecting. Spend a little time with the poignant work of Climbing the Wall, especially ‘Some kind of life’, a series of patient, dignified film records made with people who do not have their own homes:

‘Stories challenging assumptions about what constitutes home and how people understand their own sense of belonging.’

Footnote 12 Dec - Teresa Cairns (from Climbing the Wall) has written to me:

'Our most recent film production, 'No Place Like Home', deals with the difficult transitions people face when they come off 'the street'. It is featured by the Community Channel as part of their week of films exploring homelessness in Britain today, until Sunday 16th Dec:

http://www.communitychannel.org/featured/no-place-like-home/

We would love feedback if you manage to catch it - broadcast tomorrow evening at 21.30, then Sunday at 22.30.'

 

Poverty: curtains or blinkers?

Yesterday morning I had a meeting at home, concerning one of the poverty projects I’m involved in. Unconsciously as we talked, gazing out of the window I happened to notice curtains being drawn in a house across the back.

Come lunchtime and at last some high profile criticism of Tory ministers’ mythology of ‘scroungers’ who laze at home ‘with the curtains drawn’ while ‘decent hard working people’ strive to get the economy back on track.

No matter that more and more of those working people face grinding hardship; as Polly Toynbee notes, this is mendacious, disreputable dishonesty. And some people, like my neighbour, have the curtains drawn during the day because they work nights.

How have we got to this wretched level, as a society, with this smirking politicisation of the misery of millions? It’s offensive to pretend that ‘we’re all in this together’. As I wrote a couple of years ago,

Some are poncing about with Pimms on the upper deck while some are clinging desperately to the sides, and many detached are screaming from the rising waters. Responsible politicians would acknowledge that, then do something about it.

Even Demos are a little concerned about how policy makers will interpret and exploit their recent analysis of poverty. They point to the ways in which multiple deprivation gets associated with anti-social behaviour or criminality:

it is not impossible that the Government or media might brand one or other of the groups associated with a type of poverty (perhaps those with the most entrenched poverty or negative features such as poor education and material deprivation) ‘neighbours from hell’.

Demos have set up a website for the project, Poverty in perspective. I’ve been really impressed with the report, with it's practical, meaningful breakdown of 15 categories of poverty. It’s timely in the way it shows how

The most prevalent types of poverty are among the working poor and the recently redundant (as a sign of the current economic climate), who have sophisticated financial coping strategies and lack the social disadvantages all too commonly conflated with low income.

It also helps show something that my colleagues and I will be ‘striving’ (can I use that word?) to do, which is to emphasise how levels of income and outgoings are only one aspect of that experience.

The right to shelter: some positive words about squatting

I don’t need much reminding that I live in a brutal, primitive society, one which has imprisoned a young man for sheltering in an empty house. I'm also now keenly aware that the influential Centre for Social Justice does not see unequal access to housing as one of ‘the root causes of poverty and social breakdown in the UK’.

Yesterday The Guardian published a broad ranging article by Steve Rose, on squatters. Here are three quick points:

(i) Rose notes that

‘What the squatting dispute boils down to is a split between those who consider private property to be sacred, and those who would prioritise the right to shelter.’

Indeed, and it’s a no-brainer if ever I saw one.

(ii) I suspect there might have been more about the constructive role of squatters in patching up buildings and thereby saving resources:

‘In Dutch there is a word krakers – literally "crackers" – to describe the type of constructive squatter who fixes up damaged buildings. "Squatters quietly restore house" is a story that rarely makes the papers, although in the 70s in Amsterdam, hundreds of squatters moved into and repaired dilapidated buildings in the historic Nieuwmarkt area, and fought to save the neighbourhood from large-scale demolition and redevelopment. It was the beginning of a successful conservation movement in the city.’

(iii) It’s not a great reflection on our society that people have to squat, but perhaps we should celebrate what they do as an example of collective resilience (this of course is partly why squatters are anathema to the Haves):

‘In the broader sense, what ties together these disparate instances of squatting is human beings' capacity to organise and provide for themselves.’ Rose quotes Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow cities: a billion squatters:

"Wherever you go in the developing world, and, I would argue with most of the squatters in the UK and the US, you're talking about a notable act of self reliance by people facing a system that does not provide housing they can afford," says Neuwirth. "This is something we should be saluting, rather than looking at it as some kind of horrific, criminal approach."

Previously: 'Your logic is a dog.' Systematically increasing exclusion

 

Social exclusion and social policy: what has equality got to do with it?

Browsing in a bookshop yesterday I noticed this simple introductory remark on the dust jacket of Joseph Stiglitz’s The price of inequality:

‘The impact of inequality on societies is now increasingly well understood - higher crime, health problems and mental illness, lower educational achievements, social cohesion and life expectancy.’

Inequalities reinforce social exclusion: it's hardly a contentious assertion, it's been around for a while, the data seem to support it, but is it really ‘well understood’? Understood as well as, for instance, the principle that people who are in positions of privilege, wealth and power will distort whatever they have to, in order to protect those positions?

No it probably isn’t, not in the context of Westminster and the outlook of the influential Centre for Social Justice. This was made clear to me at the launch of the CSJ’s second ‘Breakthrough Britain’ programme the other day. The new programme addresses the same six themes as the first: family breakdown; economic dependency and worklessness; educational failure; drug and alcohol addiction; serious personal debt; and the role of the voluntary sector.

The reports of the first programme, published in 2007, were sub-titled ‘policy recommendations to the Conservative Party’. So has no progress been made on these themes in the interim? Are social conditions worse, or better, in the CSJ’s eyes? Perhaps they are comparable. We know that inequalities have widened; but perhaps that doesn’t matter?

The six themes strikingly avoid any reference to disadvantage experienced collectively, or to collective responses, thus reinforcing the notion that poverty and social exclusion are just experienced at the individual or household level and have to be addressed by the individual or household. I’m not sure why another bash at them is needed (I mean at the themes, not the people) nor why other forces that contribute to or might help reduce exclusion are not being considered.

So when, after the introductory speeches, Titus Alexander asked, from the floor, where the principles of equalities might feature in the process, it seemed a wholly reasonable question and an opportunity for the chair to say something like ‘yes of course, it’s fundamental, obviously we didn’t have time to cover everything in our introduction, but…’

Not a bit of it. The idea that inequalities have anything to do with the problems of disadvantage and poverty in this country – or that addressing them might have anything to do with the solutions – was abruptly dismissed, on the grounds that the data do not necessarily explain why some countries have relatively high income inequality but fewer negative social indicators. (It might depend on which indicators you choose to look at I suppose).

(Re-reading my post from a previous CSJ thematic launch, I note there was a pertinent question dismissed on that occasion too).

A short while later, another voice from the floor challenged the chairs running the six inquiries to think long term about the potential to reduce the roles of the state to zero and encourage the voluntary sector to take on all – he repeated ‘all’ – those roles. With CSJ's claimed political independence looking more threadbare than ever, those assembled took this in their stride, without any kind of reflection on the implications of this manifestly nonsensical ideological folly. (This man told us all that his wife is an MP, so presumably her role would in due course have to become voluntary. The irony went unobserved. I can't be sure, but I think I was the only one smiling at this point. But the idea of a voluntary parliament is refreshing, is it not?)

Those two moments in an otherwise dull event have scared me rather more than they might have done at another time, I suppose because of the crystallising polarisation in this country: we face a division of increasing starkness between the Haves and the have nots, which these attitudes only serve to sharpen. Since the viewpoint on the community and voluntary sector seems to be a Cameronian stance that interprets it in terms of charitable philanthropy (no sign of mutual aid or community action) the disempowerment of people in poverty will be very much part of the tight framework being devised to keep them closed in. Those few who are lucky enough to break out, earn lots of money and not trouble the elite, will be welcomed into the ranks of the Haves (bless you kind sir). The rest will be left to fester.

On leaving, I tried to charitable as I thought about the man who stood up to call for the progressive and complete eradication of the state. I hope he did not trip on a publicly-paid-for kerb into the path of any passing public transport, was helped to his feet by a passing peasant and had to be comforted by a publicly-resourced pleb police officer while he waited under a publicly-funded street light for a national health service ambulance, was taken to a hospital to be cared for by public servants using technology that had been developed in publicly-funded universities by people educated in state schools. But given the level of intelligence exhibited, I doubt he’d have had the capacity to reflect on what that might have meant.

Let’s acknowledge that in influential policy arenas in Westminster it is deemed reasonable to plot the maintenance and regulation by the voluntary sector of, for example, our governance, water, public health and safety services and so on - obviously including all those which the private sector has shown itself incompetent to run.

That doesn’t just reflect a shameful ignorance of the fact that most voluntary action carried out in this country has nothing whatsoever to do with philanthropy or formal voluntary organisations: it also illustrates the desperate inability of those on the political right to grasp the concept of collective social value.

 

Social justice, child care, and a tale of a Christmas carol

It seems we care a lot about our lack of care for children these days. The phrase ‘child abuse’ appears routinely in almost every news bulletin in some connection or other; child neglect has been an issue of expressed concern for the House of Commons Education Select Committee and more recently for the education secretary; and the government has just launched its consultation on the measurement of child poverty, informed in a timely way by this chid poverty map on the Guardian’s data blog.

When issues of social justice and children coincide, it’s just the sort of context in which someone says, ‘what we need is another Dickens!’ Indeed. The other day I was told of a family where two children go to school on alternate days, because there is only one uniform to share. An issue like this would have incensed Dickens, particularly because of his own personal experience of disrupted education.

As it happens, I was asked to give a short talk about Dickens the other day, to introduce some readings from A Christmas carol as part of an open air ‘Victorian’ high street festival. Groping around for some reminders, I chanced upon a phrase used by one of Dickens’s biographers, Edgar Johnson, who refers to his ‘uncompromising humanitarian radicalism’: fifteen syllables in three words may be OTT, but what an encapsulation!

Sadly, we can’t have another Charles Dickens. Not because there are not talented, persuasive writers and passionate social commentators in our own time – there are. But because no commentator today could expect to sustain the level of attention that Dickens managed to command for several decades in the nineteenth century. The media channels were fewer and the hall of fame far less crowded then; and Dickens had the skills, energy and temperament to maximise his impact in the interests of social justice.

He wasn’t ‘just’ a novelist, he was a communicator adept in the dominant media of his time. Lord Northcliffe described him as the greatest magazine editor of his or any age – how was that possible? It’s scary to be reminded that Dickens died at about the age I am now – he achieved so much that we might mistakenly think of him as long-lived.

All of which leaves me wondering quite why we are in such a mess now, and what is needed to signal positive social change. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to start interpreting the above-mentioned child poverty map as representing many thousands of family crises, weeks of hunger, months of debilitating stress, sickness, sense of abandonment, fear and maltreatment and loss and ruined lives. What kind of influence over our power-mongers is needed to restore a respectable insistence on social justice?

In 1843, Dickens was just 31 years old and a huge celebrity. He was at the height of his powers, full of ideas and overflowing with creativity. And he was besieged on all sides by people seeking to persuade him to use his influence in one cause or another. We should not overlook his skill in dealing with persistent lobbyists. He did not shy away from difficult issues and frequently took up a cause about which he felt passionate, and would take it further than anyone else ever could.

And so it happens that around March 1843, one of the representatives of the Children’s Employment Commission, no less, Dr Southwood Smith, sent or lent to Dickens a copy of the Commission’s second report. Sounds like a gripping read doesn't it? Nowadays we can well imagine the kinds of nasties that were depicted. On 6 March Dickens writes to Smith:

‘I am so perfectly stricken down by the blue book you have sent me, that I think… of writing, and bringing out, a very cheap pamphlet, called ‘An appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child’…

This is Dickens the journalist, moved by what he has read or heard or seen, and ready to use his formdiable reporting skills to bring social injustices to public attention. But a few days later he writes again to Dr Smith:

‘…since I wrote to you last, reasons have presented themselves for deferring the production of that pamphlet, until the end of the year. I am not at liberty to explain them further just now; but rest assured that when you know them, and see what I do, and where, and how, you will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force - twenty thousand times the force – I could exert by following my first idea…’

The phrase ‘until the end of the year’ is a clue. We are witnessing the germ of an idea in the author’s mind and he has perhaps already glimpsed the opportunity to shift his commitment from a short piece of journalism to a hugely influential work of – let’s face it – very fanciful fiction. This letter is part of the genesis of A Christmas carol.

We may not see the ghosts that Dickens conjures in the way that his contemporaries did as they read, nor feel engrossed by the polarised moralities he delineates. We don’t do sentimental any more. To me, it’s a mediocre fable, a rather laboured parable. But Dickens seems saturated with his own power, he is saying, I can do anything with words, I can persuade you of the virtue of compassion and generosity of spirit through imaginary beings, you will believe it. It would be hard not to be in awe of the prose, its forceful confidence based so solidly on ‘uncompromising humanitarian radicalism’.

Perhaps ignition was inevitable when the spark of Dickens’s genius was brought so close to a necessarily dry report from an official commission. And it’s generated plenty of warmth and light over the decades. How do we replicate that sense of compassion, now that we need it so badly?

Political stereotyping of poverty

"Language is balls coming at you from every angle" - Alan Bennett, Talking heads 2

Resonating with my recent post about the language of povertyism, here’s Tony Stoller in a JRF blog post the other day:

‘The language of 'benefits' and the 'welfare state' have become 'dog-whistle' words of implicit abuse. Politicians assert that housing benefit is designed for ‘those who lie in bed with the curtains drawn’. Those on benefits are ‘scroungers’, ‘benefits cheats’. 

‘The data shows that 61 per cent of children in poverty actually have working parents. Yet what we hear is the stigmatising of what the Victorians used to call the 'undeserving poor...'’

‘Public discourse is manipulated so that policy measures which penalise rather than help those in poverty are seen to be going with the grain of that public opinion...’

Stoller sums this up in terms of ‘political stereotyping’, which

‘blames poverty either on the individual or structural inequality, confuses welfare with poverty and fails to make the basic connections which underpin a true appreciation of the common good.’

It would be interesting to develop a wider critique of the persistent rhetoric of this government, including the use of the phrase 'hard-working families' which I mentioned previously; 'integration' as a replacement for 'cohesion'; 'doing the right thing’ as a moral justification for evidence-free whim; and the word 'heroes' used to help manage a delicately balanced political approach to the funding of defence.

 

Online networks in low income neighbourhoods

A report into the viability of local online channels in low income areas, which I wrote with Hugh Flouch for Networked Neighbourhoods, has now been published. It describes and reflects on four experimental projects we carried out during 2011-2012 in separate localities in England.

The basic rationale was to test whether resident-run online neighbourhood networks could be established in low income neighbourhoods and if they could be shown to bring social benefits.

One of the sites, in Low Hill, Wolverhampton, has lost momentum but the work has given rise to other promising online activity on the estate. Two other sites – at Littlemoor near Weymouth, and the area around Lings Wood on the outskirts of Northampton - are stable although they struggle to sustain active participation. The fourth, based in three villages in north Shropshire, is recognised as a very successful initiative which quickly achieved stability.

The report adds weight to claims that local online channels can be established inexpensively in low income areas, that they can be made sustainable, and that they contribute to the quality of local social life.

The report is here. There is also a two page summary, and a post on the Networked Neighbourhoods blog.

 

 

We own it

The tension between privatising policies and public need has been given a welcome tightening twist with the launch of We Own it, a campaign website to counter the irresponsible privatisation of the public sector.

A few months ago I was wondering how much further the tension could be built. While we have plenty of evidence to contradict the ideology that the private sector is by definition more efficient than the public, we have no evidence to show that this government takes much notice of evidence.

Through an article by Polly Toynbee in the summer, I learned about a few examples of ‘in-sourcing’ by which some local authorities seem to be demonstrating the logic of taking certain functions back in house in the interests of efficiency and value.

Meanwhile our rail privatisation started to creak and then fell over. At least we’re having some kind of debate now. All stirred up by the demise of A4E and the bizarre example of Atos, the company which sub-contracted disability assessments back to the NHS.

Public libraries are part of this mix. Not only are they symbolic of what remains of the public realm: as I wrote here,

‘Once they're gone, it's not just hard to get the library service back: it will be that much harder to reinstate the notion of publicness.’

The We Own It site notes that, through privatisation, costs go up, services get worse, they are run by people who are not accountable, staff are undermined, and the whole nonsense is difficult to reverse. We have been watching the large-scale, systematic, ideologically-justified, evidence-defying manufacture of widespread social exclusion. Time to bring it to an end.

The language of povertyism

It seems to me that some of the language of political discourse is getting more and more dangerously partial. Of course, there's the usual propensity for manifest misrepresentation - the most exquisite example being Cameron's remark yesterday that - wait for it -

'it’s us, the modern compassionate Conservative party, who are the real champions of fighting poverty in Britain today.' 

(Source, at 12.16) 

You can take that as laughable or baroque or insulting, or all three and more, but it's so far from being a sensible reflection of the policies he is promoting that no-one's going to be too affected by it.

There's more serious, nasty abuse of language going on though. I particularly dislike the determined repetition of the phrase 'hard-working people' as if they are the only folk worthy of a government's attention. I pointed this out a few weeks ago and the number of mentions seems to keep increasing as the government seeks to justify the detachment of state support from those who do not have work.

If you've ever had a period of unemployment, you'll have a keen sense of just how insulting and degrading this attitude is. Norman Tebbitt achieved a comparable effect back in the 1980s with his line about how his father got on his bike and went looking for work. (So is that the end of the state's responsibility then? we all asked). It's divisive and in the long term pointlessly damaging.

Once again we are being offered persistently a language that constructs poverty as the fault of individuals, thereby implying that the state is absolved of the responsibility to provide opportunity or support for them. All of which is underpinned by an economic policy, such as it is, which is widely derided as misguided at best. What good can come of this?

Previously:

It's the povertyism, stupid

 

Older people and informal neighbourhood care: an issue that won’t go away

JRF are starting to crank up their thinking about informal neighbourhood care and older people, and I’m starting to sit forward in the expectation that something really useful will emerge from their work over the next couple of years.

I was reminded just yesterday that we’re well behind the Dutch in our thinking and action on this theme (although they have a general election coming up with plenty of potential to go backwards fast).

Nearly three years ago I remember offering a somewhat disillusioned post after running out of steam and failing to get anyone interested in the issue of neighbourly support. Even Age Concern, who had supported my research and publication, could muster no interest. At the time the problem seemed to be that the ageing agencies were all preoccupied with what they saw as the ‘countable’ issues of pensions and benefits. Crisis, what crisis?

The crunch may be not so much whether high quality research and policy advice emerges – it surely will – but whether JRF manage to get any purchase on policy itself. High stakes, in an ageing society with its formal support systems being rapidly dismantled.

 

'Your logic is a dog.' Systematically increasing exclusion

‘Genuine respect for the law is the result of possessing something which the law exerts itself to guard.’ George Gissing, The nether world (1889).

This is a rum old business, this news about criminalising squatters. When I was a kid I used to pass a squatted block of flats in Harrow, the outer wall painted in large letters - 'Your logic is a dog. And so am I.'

To try to be fair to the government: on the day the widely-decried regulation to criminalise squatters was publicised, they published sensible looking guidelines to help local authorities deal with 'rogue' landlords. Most of us wouldn’t have noticed.

The determination of the Haves to hound, punish and brutalise people in poverty seems to be taking on its own momentum, albeit with familiar rhetoric. Here, in the Ministry of Justice press release, are some of the words of the housing minister:

'For too long, hardworking people have faced long legal battles to get their homes back from squatters, and repair bills reaching into the thousands when they finally leave.’

(I know, I know, the heart bleeds, sometimes some of them can’t decide which home to sleep in, it must be awful having to make your mind up).

But what is the word ‘hardworking’ doing in that sentence? How does the minister know that all those people who, for instance, have more housing than they need, and seek to make profit from it, are ‘hardworking’? It doesn’t follow. Could he possibly be using the term in order to establish some kind of moral distance, as part of the nasty rhetoric of marginalising the unemployed and the poor?

What struck me about the media coverage yesterday was that the government appeared to be more interested in publicising its bullying approach to the crime of squatting, so that people who have lots of property will feel there is justice for them (to go with the legislation they already have) than they were in offering a progressive approach to addressing problems associated with homelessness. Nothing, not a word, about bringing abandoned properties back into use, so that fewer people are forced onto the streets.

Whether or not there is a satisfactory strategy on homelessness, the driving assumption is that ‘the public’ want to hear that people who experience exclusion are being dealt with ‘firmly’, and never mind the consequences. That’s scary. It feeds into the accumulating mood of povertyism, which I described here as ‘straightforward nasty prejudice against a large class of people who, by inconsiderately not having much stuff, manage to make others uncomfortable about their own greed.’