Neighbourhoods

Ephemerality – it’s here to stay

In time of shifting economic fortunes, the flexible use and re-use of space and buildings can play a valuable part in helping local businesses and other agencies to survive and flourish.

It sometimes seems as if ‘temporary use’ is a contemporary phenomenon associated with the 2008 economic recession. This may not be true, but there’s certainly been a significant recent emphasis on how planners can use redundant spaces and assets to help local economies and town centres resist the depression and thrive.

The spin-off benefits – often associated with arts, third sector organisations and community development – are not trivial either, as was illustrated in the Compendium for the Civic Economy for instance.

Now we have some research, recommendations and a charter to show our local planners and regen officials, thanks to the SEEDS project (‘Stimulating Enterprising Environments for Development and Sustainability’), a European Regional Development Fund initiative.

The argument is that temporary use and re-use should not be seen as a short-term sticking plaster solution, but has to be written into town and city planning if local economies are to grow and thrive; and this requires something of a mindset shift among planners and policy-makers. So it’s a bit like the old problem of formalising the informal – make ephemerality a permanent feature of policy and practice.

 

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.

 

Neighbours won’t be incentivised to police bad parents. Can we move on now?

Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills, seems to like to lob a banger into the fire every now and then. A few sparks have arisen this past few days after he made remarks that have been taken to suggest that neighbours should pry on and police the parenting of fellow-residents.

In some cases, perhaps unsurprisingly, this has been interpreted as deliberate policy-distraction on behalf of the government, to keep the anti-scrounger attitude levels high.

To be fair to Wilshaw – there’s a phrase I never would have thought I would write – I think it’s nothing of the sort: it was just an eccentric offering of his own, pre-considered and ill-considered.

I reach this view because I have watched a good deal of the select committee meeting where the remark was made. Committee chair Graham Stuart MP (at 10.00.49) was asking, somewhat optimistically I felt, for some guidance on how as a society we might go about compensating for the (perceived) ‘hollowing out’ of family and community.

The Chief Inspector’s remarks were contextualised with reference to the idea of the ‘big society’, first by a member of the committee (at 10.02.46) and then by Wilshaw himself (at 10.06.01). He deliberately prepares the ground for his remarks, even saying that it’s a point he intends to return to later in the discussion.

He talks of addressing ‘social taboos’ (such as fathers not accepting their parental responsibilities and parents not engaging with their children’s schools) that he believes are diminishing. (Wait: though this be method, yet there is madness in it). He says that this creates a vacuum and that ‘there will be people who can step into that vacuum.’ Then follows the now widely-quoted challenge to policy:

‘How do you incentivise good citizens, good people, good family members to engage with the worst, the most difficult members of society? That’s a policy issue for government. How do you financially incentivise those people to get up in the morning and knock on the neighbour's door and say 'your children are not up yet, they've not had their breakfast yet, why aren't you taking them to school?'’

To their credit, it seems like the committee, unlike some journalists and many others (e.g. in the comments here) were ready to dismiss this as random silliness and move on; and so should the rest of us. It’s not a sensible suggestion and it’s unlikely to have been fed cynically into the system by Tory Central, despite their fondness for blunt and polarising moral over-simplification.

But it was articulated in public and was clearly pre-considered. So not for the first time there are questions about how someone who thinks so carelessly at times can have so much power and influence in the educational and child care sectors.

And how can we have a head of Ofsted who talks so irresponsibly about responsibility, flinging around arbitrary judgemental phrases like ‘good people’ and ‘the worst, most difficult members of society’ when giving evidence to a parliamentary committee? We can only wonder, as these questions have since been overtaken in the news by the subsequent rumoured spat between the minister and the chief inspector. What entertainment.

 

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.

 

Common interest?

I have been thinking of writing something about the notion of ‘common wealth’ – partly as a reaction to the way the recent Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka exposed issues of shared principles, compromise, the value of inclusion and the meaning of exclusion.

Time has not allowed, but at least I can point to one or two articles where the themes that need exploring, in my view, are taken up.

Owen Jones, for example, last week was puzzling over some of the nonsense claimed for the private sector by people who deride the necessary platform of the public sector on which they depend. (I covered very similar ground here, baffled by some drivelling plonker claiming he or she made no use of the state except ‘when my driver drives on public roads’).

Or Seumas Milne here covering the Haves' ongoing and highly successful project to transfer income and wealth from workforce, public and state to the corporate sector.

This perverse determination to destroy the commonwealth that has been built up over centuries for good reasons, manifests itself sometimes in quite unexpected little corners, because the media surreptitiously encourages people to make more and more daft observations. Hence for example the predictably silly suggestion from author Terry Deary, that ‘giving poor people free e-readers would be a "hell of a lot cheaper" than keeping libraries "open at all costs." The only interpretation available here seems to be that what you can get from an e-reader and what you can get from a library are comparable. The possibility that they might not be, seems to be beyond this man’s capacity. Perhaps that doesn't matter to him so long as whatever is public gets demolished.

In all this, one of the messages that seldom gets attention is the profligacy of the style of government represented. We know that the cost of privatisation, to the taxpayer, is exorbitant in most cases: it follows that any government that pursues this course while still spouting rhetoric about reducing the cost of the state is guilty of extravagant deceit at best. But the nonsense reigns under the aegis of acceptable ideology.

Among those who are trying to do something about this are Shared Assets, New Start and Co-Operatives UK: they are jointly hosting an event on ‘Land and community: a 21st century commons’. London, 5 December. More here.

 

Minimum standards for neighbourhoods?

‘Neighbourhood pressures are building once again,’ says this new report by Ed Cox and colleagues at Ippr North. The subject is neighbourhood change in Britain (by which, as far as I can tell, they mean England).

The report argues that the objectives for neighbourhood policy should be:

• to ensure that all neighbourhoods are able to generate jobs and wealth themselves, or are connected to economic opportunities in the wider area;
• to ameliorate the worst effects of wider economic trends, and ensure minimum standards of neighbourhood quality and service provision;
• to bring about the radical transformation of those neighbourhoods that have become caught in costly spirals of decline.

The last one is as important as it ever was, and more urgent now. The first objective has of course been hideously and pointlessly made harder and more complex by the systematic weakening of local government.

The second objective, concerning minimum standards, is to be welcomed in my view, if we can stop politicians slipping gleefully into the grotesque folly of League Table Mentalities and Target Obsession Disorder. Curiously, there is no reference to the lifetime neighbourhoods movement, although in supporting that, the ILC-UK put forward the argument that poor design of neighbourhoods should be grounds for rejection at the planning stage. Pioneering work on ‘minimum acceptable place standards’, is apparently, imminent.

Meanwhile, the ippr report calls for a regular ‘state of the neighbourhoods report’ combining statistical data with information 'uploaded by neighbourhoods themselves'. I think I first started peddling this idea in 2005, at a time when there was a sympathetic government which could have afforded to try it: so don’t hold your breath.

The report argues that the principal means of narrowing the gaps between neighbourhoods is through ‘economic growth combined with measures to ensure that the proceeds of growth are better shared.’ I can’t be the only one wishing the word ‘stability’ was used here instead of ‘growth’.

This is going to be a very useful report in terms of documenting knowledge, with a discussion of objective measures of the pressures on neighbourhoods, and summaries of the recent history of neighbourhood policy and theories of neighbourhood change. It includes a fascinating comparative table on ‘old versus new neighbourhoods approaches’.

But I can’t find that little extra something that would make the report stand out. There are several mentions of ‘social innovation’ – but these feel under-informed and would benefit hugely from an appreciation of the movement encapsulated in the Compendium of the Civic Economy. For example – given the acknowledged point that the nature of the private rented sector is a nasty cause of problems at the neighbourhood level - how about a call for a social entrepreneurial approach to re-inventing that sector?

 

Re-feudalising the country includes selling off common land (and hiding Cromwell)

What’s this about common land? Jane Merrick in the Indy this morning tells us that there are 3,870 registered ‘village greens’ in England and Wales, covering 8,770 acres. Apparently that's less than half the size of the family estate of Richard Benyon MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Natural Environment, Water and Rural Affairs. Merrick writes:

‘We don't take up that much land, we commoners. Our families don't need 20,000 acres to take the dog for a walk, or let the kids kick a football.’

And without a hint of irony, it seems – these rich posh people tend to have a substantial intelligence gap in that department - Mr Benyon has said: ‘Towns across the country have been held back from getting the developments they want through misuse of the village green system.’ (Nothing then about damage to the country from misuse of the hereditary and political systems?) The Open Spaces Society response is here and the straightforward dishonesty of the department’s line is exposed here.

File under Tory Arrogance. But take it more seriously. This is about their systematic attack on what is public and on the rights we have in common. It goes alongside the wanton, evidence-free and often costly decimation of the community sector, social support, public libraries and the postal service – things we own. Further down in her column, Merrick notes the irony in the fact that:

‘a new 10ft-high iron perimeter fence has been erected along the main public access area of the House of Commons. From the pavement, you can no longer see the statue of Oliver Cromwell which stands near St Stephen's Entrance.’

It’s a brazen stroke of sinister symbolism. Parliamentary democracy is bankrupt and the statue has been sequestered - by parliament! Perhaps the fence should be stormed for that reason - which in some eyes, in an added irony, would justify its installation.

This is all part of the determined re-feudalisation of the country, although of course as the increasingly perverse climate-change-deniers with ministerial responsibility for Mr Benyon’s department are trying to make sure, before long there may not be much environment left for the peasants to work on. And there will be fences around the whole of Westminster, like a vast medieval castle.

 

Formal and informal care for older people: an example of ‘reverse crowding out’?

I’ve been working on a literature review of older people and social isolation, which has necessarily involved tracing the history of some of the ways that societies support older people. All sorts of approaches lie scattered about – from almshouses through residential care homes, home help and sheltered housing, from community care and home-sharing to contemporary favourites like co-housing and age-friendly places. Are we building towards the optimum combination, or just working our way through a finite range of politically salient options?

Let’s see what’s been happening in Sweden, a country known for its commitment to welfare in general. In a recent interview for the European Urban Knowledge Network, researcher Cecilia Henning observed:

‘What is interesting in the Swedish example is that we have had a very decisive policy towards ageing in place, but we have found that we have gone too far… we have closed a lot of residential facilities… because the politicians and the municipalities think that we should not have so much residential care, we should have ageing in place. So instead, we give home care in people’s homes. But at a certain point old people want to go to residential care units because they feel insecure and lonely.’

This seems to suggest that informal care provided in the home to older people in the interests of ageing in place has ‘crowded out’ the state’s provision of residential facilities. In a conference paper Henning and her co-researcher Magnus Jegermalm report that

‘After cutbacks and changed priorities concerning Home Help the public sector have focused more on helping people with ‘heavier’ tasks involving personal care (e.g. dressing, bathing, feeding, using the toilet). This development have most likely led to that informal caregivers and volunteers commonly carries out ‘lighter’ tasks for someone who is a relative but might also be a neighbour or a friend.’

Hmmm. This appears to be an example of ‘reverse crowding out,’ whereby ‘private provision of a public good replaces existing tax-supported provision of the public good' (Isaac and Norton, 2013). Just what the neo-liberal ordered? (Although to be realistic for a moment - not an attitude that can necessarily be associated with neo-liberals - there doesn't seem to be very much research that supports the crowding out hypothesis in the welfare context).

What is clear is that the current ‘in-vogue’ approach, ageing in place, is, like all other approaches to support for older people, inescapably political.

 

 

The next housing crisis: what about all those bedrooms?

Successive governments’ reluctance to address the looming housing crisis is not news, but it creates news. The other day we had Tory chairman Grant Shapps, the man whose name sounds like a disease of the voluntary sector, making an international fool of himself for mistakenly and hysterically claiming the UN special rapporteur on housing had not spoken to government officials, and for calling the 'bedroom tax' by its popular name. It is an indefensible policy, so you can sorta see his problem.

More helpfully, on the same day Demos published a new report, The top of the ladder, on the UK’s ‘next housing crisis’ – the chronic undersupply of appropriate housing for older people. 

With some new polling and analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the report claims that more than half (58 per cent) of people over 60 were interested in moving; and more than half (57 per cent) of those interested in moving wanted to downsize by at least one bedroom, rising to 76 per cent among older people currently occupying three-, four- and five-bedroom homes.

‘A lack of choice of suitable homes to downsize into is having a negative effect not just on older people’s health and wellbeing, but on the rest of the housing chain, as 85 per cent of larger family homes owned by older people only become available when someone dies.’

 

Blueprint for New York neighbourhoods

New York has many neighbourhoods and a great diversity across them all. There’s a mayoral election coming up which, along with the ongoing context of recession, sharpens the acoustics for debate about social policy.

United Neighborhood Houses is an umbrella agency for settlements and has just published its detailed and pragmatic Blueprint for neighborhoods. Recommendations are set out under these main headings:

A. Support Quality Educational Investments That Prepare All Young People for a Productive Future

B. Enhance New Yorkers’ Ability to Enter and Succeed in the Workforce

C. Build, Support, and Sustain Healthy, Livable and Inclusive Communities

D. Making Government Work for Neighborhoods.

There are plenty of curious insights and factoids along the way. I was particularly struck by this one: 

'By improving their English one level, immigrants can increase their annual wages by 35%.'

Source: Akbulut-Yuksel et al, 'The effects of English proficiency among childhood immigrants,' 2011.

 

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.

 

Whatever happened to ‘publicness’?

Last week I chaired a panel debate on community managed libraries, at the national conference of CILIP (formerly and more recognisably The Library Association). It’s hard to keep up with this rapidly changing but hugely symbolic issue. I try to do so not least because – as I have argued often before - our libraries are one of the few things left that consolidate the public realm.

For three years now whatever is regarded as public has been under sustained, unambiguous attack by the present government under the guise of ‘necessary’ public sector spending cuts. Deliberate inaction in defence of the public library network, by the minister with responsibility for them, is in my view manifestly strategic. I am not likely to forget having been at the pre-election launch of the big society three years ago, when we were told that

‘Neighbourhoods will be able to bid to take over the running of community amenities, such as parks and libraries that are under threat.'

The ‘threat’ had yet to be articulated but the clear message was that if people really wanted their public amenities, they would demonstrate this in practical ways by showing a readiness to manage them unpaid: and if not, those resources, tainted by the ideology of being collectively owned, would be allowed to wither.

Some still haven’t seen the plainness of this particular writing on walls all round the country. Many people seem ready to blame their local council for the circumstances they find their libraries in, but it’s just too much intellectual effort to work out why those councils – and the economy - are in the state they’re in. Of those who recognise that the problem goes beyond local government, most seem to have signed up to the myth of excessive Labour spending (even though there is 'no evidence that increases in social policy spending caused a crisis in the public finances preceding the global financial crisis and recession’ - Lupton et al, 2013); the rhetoric of shirkers and scroungers; and the narrative of public sector profligacy and incompetence. All of which serves both to deny the culpability of the financial sector and to smokescreen the systematic dismantlement of things that are public.

And while we watch people in Greece, Brasil, Egypt and elsewhere express their anger against exploitation and manipulation by the Haves, in this country we go all quivery-mousy and get on with nibbling our own tails.

The sheltered, lethargic indifference and lack of political awareness seemed to have its dull echo at the CILIP debate last week, reinforced by the fact that those who work for local authorities are unable to express criticism of their employers’ policies. The tone of passive acquiescence in the room was largely about acknowledging the apparent inevitability of the current transformation of the library network into a mix of different, experimental forms of governance and day-to-day maintenance; but it also smacked of political naivety in a very English sense.

The speakers and I will be working on a short document based on the session, and I’ll make a little announcement on this blog when the time comes. In the meantime, I thought I’d just set down one of the points I made in my introductory remarks.

Several years ago, Martin Dudley and I published a short study on public libraries and community cohesion for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. It included (p15) a framework of four essential attributes of public libraries:

• Library as resource
• Librarians as expertise
• Library as place
• Library as symbol of the public realm.

We claim no special credit for this model: it drew on the work of others before and around us, but it’s handy to have and to refer to.

More recently, the Arts Council (which has taken over the responsibility for libraries from the MLA, but with what looks like a stronger political steer from the government strategists) published the much-publicised The library of the future. The paper refers to the following three essential ingredients that ‘define the public library’:

• a safe, creative community space that is enjoyable and easy to use, in both physical and virtual form
• an excellent range of quality books, digital resources and other content
• well-trained, friendly people to help users to find what they want either independently or with support.

These will be recognisable from the list that Martin and I settled on, but there’s one missing. What happened to publicness? How is it that ‘being public’ is no longer an essential, defining characteristic of public libraries?

I can’t help wondering if the notion might just be politically inconvenient and inexpedient, perhaps? And its omission from that document and its elision in more general debate amounts to collusion in the destructive anti-public policies of the present government. Does anyone have a better explanation?

 

Policy rushes in, where commonsense fears to tread

Occasionally in my commentary on neighbouring and policy I’ve had a go at sketching out roughly how close policy and regulation can get to the everyday practise of neighbouring. Area-based league tables of neighbourliness, for example, in order to shame the less genial neighbourhoods...? Don’t snigger, it could happen.

Here’s an example where policy makers have decided that people should care more for their elders. In China it has been deemed necessary to introduce an Elderly Rights Law to address the growing problem of lonely elderly people, by ordering adult children to visit their ageing parents. The law has been applied immediately: the BBC tells us that a 77-year-old woman brought the case against her daughter and the court in Wuxi has ordered the latter to visit her mother once every two months.

Imagine the visits, if you will – their excited surprise and warmth after one month and thirty days, their light humour, the imaginative gifts so sensitively thought-through, the hours passing in laughter and delight… er, no? What do you mean, you think the daughter might be reluctant and the elderly mother somewhat vindictive? Hmm, one might almost think family relations was a domain unsuited to policy intervention.

 

What is the place of emotion in the making of policy?

In the years I spent shuttling between local initiatives in low income neighbourhoods and oddly clean cupboard rooms in Westminster, I never really cracked the way the experience of disadvantage was absorbed or dismissed as ‘personal’ and disconnected from policy.

You see this constantly in the skirmishes of local democracy of course – a local meeting where an officer or elected member gets a thorough bashing by a resident who’s living a kind of hell that current policies don’t address. Fierce steam gets released but policy is unaffected.

Such occasions can be off-putting for the well-meaning policy maker. I think most are aware of the gravitational effect here, caused often by internal pressures of work, of the risk of gradually becoming detached from local experience.

Politicians shield themselves from occasional bombardment, and disparage the ‘personal’ as ‘emotional’ while routinely exploiting examples through the media when it suits them to do so.

Sometimes politicians try to use public events to draw the sting of citizens’ anger, and occasionally find they’ve over-estimated their own political skills. When they view confrontation with residents as political sport and not as a chance to understand and address needs, that illustrates the tension I’m talking about.

At the same time, people who have profound experience of the failure of social systems to protect them, may not have the perspective that helps anyone relate it to policy in a meaningful way. But sometimes you hear a really considered, articulate exposition of experience that takes the personal and places it in a generalised policy context. That’s rare, and risks diluting the very emotion of lived experience that gives pertinent urgency to the cause. And often intermediaries, like housing workers say, who can speak the equivocal language of policy while combining understanding of several individual examples of disadvantage, can make contributions that are valued and welcomed by both sides.

So what is the place of emotion in the making of policy? Rosie Anderson has done some work on this ‘essential but difficult territory’ and TSRC have just published a fascinating paper based on policy making around poverty in Scotland (Summary; 4-page briefing; working paper). Emotional knowledge, she says, is frequently described by her informants as

‘ambiguous, unreliable and potentially overwhelming knowledge – in contrast with “rational” knowledge, which is the prerequisite for “professionalism” in policy-making and a necessity for making policy decisions.’

This sounds a lot like what Ivan Illich described as a ‘cognitive disorder’, resting on the illusion that

‘the knowledge of the individual citizen is of less value than the “knowledge” of science. The former is the opinion of individuals. It is merely subjective and is excluded from policies. The latter is “objective” – defined by science and promulgated by expert spokesmen. This objective knowledge is viewed as a commodity which can be refined… and fed into a process, now called “decision-making.” This new mythology of governance by the manipulation of knowledge-stock inevitably erodes reliance on government by people.” (Tools for conviviality, 1973).

Anderson makes the point that policy processes are contrived to exclude subjectivity and individuality. And if people are to engage with those processes, it's hard to see what else they are to bring to them. I have been in public meetings where a roomful of people, having collectively an enormous wealth of knowledge about the local issues under discussion, have sat in disconnected silence because the language and process disenfranchised them at the very point they were supposed to be being ‘invited’ to participate. Even the most well-meaning policy makers can flounder at this point.

Conversely, there are those meetings which seem like unstructured and unruly free-for-alls, a sequence of barely related angry rants. As Anderson says,

‘In practice this process of moving from the particular and emotional to general and impersonal, so simple-sounding on paper, is actually very difficult to get right in the eyes of policy practitioners because of emotional knowledge’s ambiguous status in policy.’

Partly, I have no doubt, this is an educational issue. As I have said often before, too many of us emerge from the education system with no idea how local democracy functions. For a long time it’s been in the interests of politicians to keep things that way, although some of them appear to be less sure nowadays (that’s a network society effect, I think). And Anderson raises the question of how we provide better support for policy workers emotionally when they engage with such lived experience.

We’ve all talked about emotional intelligence over the years. But it strikes me as curious that no-one seems to have got to grips with this topic before. This is a hugely important site of conflict and potentially fruitful understanding, and Anderson has pin-pointed the significance of

‘the negotiation and policing of the boundary between “personal” and “professional” knowledge about social change.’

 

Creating citizenship communities

Civic involvement is an enduring ‘worthy-but-dull’ theme of social policy discourse. The school curriculum is currently a bit of a policy hot potato. What do you get if you bring the two together? Some schools struggle to deliver anything much beyond the core curriculum, while the fact that there are so many old Etonians in positions of power and influence is explained by an ‘ethos of public service.’

Here’s a report of research into Creating citizenship communities, published last week, which investigated the thinking and actions of young people and professionals in schools about ‘forms of citizenship that relate to strong communities’:

‘There appears to be a disconnect between school discourse around the importance of community and civic engagement, and what is taught in schools. Citizenship education is not always viewed as a subject that is taken seriously by schools. Young people in this study did not feel that teaching about community and citizenship fully prepared them to take an active part in their school or local communities.

‘Young people have strong opinions on what schools can do to recognise the contributions they already make to their communities, as well as to support young people in engaging in civic action. These include building positive links with other schools in their community; actively encouraging interaction between different groups of pupils within and outside of school; making sure that opportunities to get involved with in- and out-of-school projects are equally available to all students; and taking an interest in pupils’ lives beyond the school gates.’

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

 

Safety and the militarisation of schools

A couple of months ago I had to deliver something to a primary school during the day in term time. It wasn't as much of a security challenge as I had feared, which may reflect a degree of comparative enlightenment at the school in question; or perhaps it was in a low-risk area; or that my expectations have been affected negatively by the 'Secured by Design' movement. I certainly dislike the tendency to militarise our schools and see it as consistent with a culture of private car use and the development of gated communities.

Fences are a bog standard example of the human inclination to outsource social responsibilities to technology. If you can minimise the supervision of children by constraining their movement, it allows you to get on with other things. But then, wait, other people might be able to reach them: so you have to add a camera or two. And then what? According to the National Rifle Association, that respected forum of balanced humanitarian reflection, in every school you'd need 'a good guy with a gun.'

Today there's a new set of papers from those excellent folk at the new economics foundation (nef) on the need to revisit what we mean by 'prevention' with a view to coming up with a positive sense of prevention across social policy. One of the papers, by Anna Minton and Jody Aked, takes aim at the effect of Secured by Design principles on schools. They make the point that there is a significant impact in low income neighbourhoods:

'Schools, in particular, have become high security environments, emphasizing gating, high fences and CCTV. Because Secured by Design requirements for schools and public buildings are based on an audit of local crime risk, higher crime areas, which correlate with higher deprivation scores, are now characterised by public buildings... with a militarised feel to them.'

The papers are welcome but I fear too conceptual and theoretical to ensure the sort of debate that is needed. And the time may not be ideal for the encouragement of more open thinking about the Other. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Looking out for neighbours: resilience, recognition and responsibilities

The Atlantic has a piece by Sarah Goodyear on the contribution of social connections to community resilience in time of crisis, picking up on a New Yorker article (£) by Eric Klinenberg. Hurricane Sandy came close enough for some policy makers to have their suits splashed with a little nasty reality, in turn legitimating (for a short while at least) some public discussion of these issues:

‘As cities prepare for climate change in earnest, they’re going to need to harden infrastructure, change building patterns, and overhaul government emergency procedures. But they’re also going to have to put a greater value on the human connections that can be found in walkable neighborhoods where people know each other and support local businesses.’

The assumption that walkability might be a key criterion is an interesting one, and one of the comments to the article expresses scepticism about it. I’m aware of one study (Du Toit et al 2007) which found that 'walkable neighbourhoods are not necessarily more sociable places in which to live'.

However the researchers in that, south Australian, study were looking for 'strong' social ties between neighbours - a mistake in my view (and a very common one) because you don't necessarily need strong connections, or to feel you belong to a close-knit community, to have someone look out for you in time of crisis (although they help of course).

We can’t all be, and some of us definitely do not want to be, part of a close-knit community, as I’ve suggested often enough. What might help all round would be higher levels of neighbourly recognition – meaning, having been seen around the neighbourhood from time to time, perhaps with a smile or a few words: being accessible in time of need without invading others’ privacy. It's reasonable to assume that walkable environments are more likely to give rise to what I call sequences of informal recognition, which accrue to provide a form of social capital that has largely been overlooked in study and policy.

The point also needs to be made that when crisis strikes, and there are residents who happen to lack social connections, they are going to stand a better chance of being picked up and supported if there is an active local online network that people use to communicate openly and fast. If authorities anywhere in the world really are looking to invest in community resilience, they should be looking to facilitate the development of independent, citizen-led online networks.

Meanwhile back in the UK, not dissimilar themes have been raised following a claim by Care Minister Norman Lamb in the Telegraph that:

‘We have lost the extended family because families have become dispersed. We need to rebuild that neighbourly resilience that helps people stay independent. If someone is living on their own never seeing anyone, that is a dismal existence, and it often ends up with it all collapsing and them going into a care home.’

This is followed of course by the urging of us all to do more neighbouring; and a possible new slogan – this is not ‘big society’ but (tada!) the ‘decent society.’ Capitalisation and branding to follow, presumably.

The minister said that councils should lead the way in encouraging people to help their neighbours stay out of care. ‘I want local authorities to be giving people guidance about how they can maintain their own resilience, using their friends, their neighbours, their community and in that way build resilience and reduce the burden on the state.’

Lamb’s remarks aroused some contemptuous counter-argument from Sarah Ditum on Comment is Free. And to the extent that this is about caring, she has a point – the amount of unpaid care that is being carried out for people with an illness or disability has increased and is likely to keep increasing. Her riposte resonates perfectly reasonably:

‘It's not the populace that's resigning from its responsibilities to the vulnerable; it's the government.’

The minister has generalised unhelpfully and not taken the time needed to catch up with any thinking that anyone else has been doing, or to find out what is the current state of play. And we need not dwell on the trite assumptions about 'the neighbour support that used to be there'. But still, there is a worthwhile message here if it weren't so badly packaged. It would be responsible for local authorities to issue guidance which takes account of what is already going on – if they have the time or funds to get this done.

What seems to me problematic in the language Lamb uses is his hard-wired political compulsion to individualise the response, rather than acknowledge an obvious role for community development. This is typified in referring to 'independence' without entertaining the possibility of interdependence.

This is routine political contortionism I suppose. The government would like the beneficial consequences of community development without having to accept either that some people experience disadvantage or misfortune that is not their fault, or that they can address those disadvantages by themselves (without the disempowering arbitrariness of philanthropy) if supported in doing so.

 

 

This could be the start of something sensible (updated)

In Scotland, proposals for a law banning parking on pavements.

Future generations will wonder why it took us so long.

Footnote: I just came across this recent letter to a Canadian newspaper which notes un-neighbourly complaints concerning residents who park their cars facing in the wrong direction. It seems that by having a bye-law which accommodates such complaints,some residents are using an intermediary (the city council) to get at their neighbours.

Pic Martin Dudley).

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.

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.

 

Anti-localism disease in social policy - from the Dieback Administration

Civic Voice have cranked up their campaign against the government’s proposals to change the planning system. As with the creeping phenomenon of academies, the government’s attitude to planning seems to be peculiarly anti-localist, contradicting all the rhetoric about localism we’ve been hearing.

‘These proposals will mean neighbours will not be able to object to unsightly developments and big business will be able to install broadband boxes and other infrastructure without notifying the local council. Effectively removing the community voice…’

The effect could well be to erode rapidly the character of neighbourhoods that have taken shape over time in a considered, fundamentally democratic way.

And it’s the erosion of the context for and everyday evidence of local democracy that most concerns me. Policies that treat schools and libraries as if they were challenges in a demolition ball arcade game are part of the same disdainful, destructive attitude towards the places where people live.

Similarly, today we had the local government secretary reinforcing the creed that locally elected councils might not be trusted to take decisions on local services, so that central government might have to confiscate their right to do so. (Note his ludicrous use of the phrase 'hard-working residents').

And I can’t even begin to contemplate the impact of the widely-derided universal credit system on social support. I was in a meeting of local community and voluntary agencies this morning where there was a sense of desperation at the trauma and havoc to come. No doubt some official would call such forebodings ‘hysterical’, in very much the same way that, with reference to the latest Children’s Commissioner’s report on child sexual abuse,

‘a Government source said it was “difficult to overstate the contempt” with which ministers viewed the report’s conclusions.’ (Mail)

The prime minister seems to have disagreed, but hey, that’s ministers for you, they're a jolly lot, never the kind of folk to take such an issue too seriously.

I believe W. H. Auden kept a rotten apple on his mantlepiece at Oxford in the late nineteen thirties (no, a fruit, not a computer, dummy), to remind him of the condition of Europe. Today we have our own comparable living-dying image to remind us of the state of this country. The telegraph reported recently that ash dieback is ‘now beyond containment’. There are some kinds of devastation from which the potential for any kind of recovery is hard to identify, and the loss too hard to contemplate.

Don’t be surprised if the present government, or what passes for a government, goes down in history as the Dieback Administration. Now I think of it, that might make a decent title for a film. Ken Loach, you’re needed.

 

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.

 

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

 

The advantages of moving from one kind of poverty to another

Can the quality of life of people in poverty be improved, without changing their economic circumstances?

Let’s talk millions. I was passed a paper from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner the other day that tells me there are 2.3 million children living in poverty in the UK. (The figure rises to 3.6 million if the After Housing Cost (AHC) measure is used).

About the same time, I read this article in Science which begins by telling us that:

‘Nearly 9 million people in the United States live in “extreme-poverty” neighborhoods in which at least 40% of residents have incomes below the federal poverty threshold.’

In both cases these are scary numbers of people in poverty. And we probably all assume that to help people who are in poverty, you really need to help increase their income and/or decrease their costs.

But the research reported in the Science article, based on a large scale experiment in the US, challenges that assumption by suggesting you can improve quality of life significantly by helping people to move out of ‘distressed neighbourhoods’ – without necessarily increasing their income.

Here’s the gist of the research. Between 1994 and 1998, a US programme called Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomly assigned vouchers to a large number of low-income public housing families living in high-poverty areas in five U.S. cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. The vouchers enabled families to move to another area, and many chose to do so:

‘By far the most common reason applicants reported signing up for MTO was to get away from gangs and drugs, with around three quarters reporting this as one of their top two reasons for wanting to move.'

The researchers used ‘a comprehensive measure of people’s quality of life as they perceive it, using adult self-reports of subjective well-being (SWB)' and found ‘sizable positive effects‘:

‘moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood leads to long-term (10- to 15-year) improvements in adult physical and mental health and subjective well-being, despite not affecting economic self-sufficiency.’

In other words, a statistically significant and sustained change in reported sense of well-being (‘a measure that represents a comprehensive assessment by the participants themselves of the extent to which their lives have been affected‘) resulted from moving out of a challenging area, even though the families were still in poverty.

The researchers conclude:

‘The [MTO] program failed to produce detectable impacts on family income. But if the goal is the broader one of improving the well-being of poor families, then policies that seek to ameliorate the adverse effects of dangerous, distressed neighborhoods on poor families are worthy of careful consideration.‘

This could be politically tricky. Do we want our policy makers to assume that the misery of poverty can be ameliorated more readily by a programme of physically moving some families around, than by addressing economic inequalities?

I don’t think we want them deciding that poverty is a housing allocation problem which can be deemed to be the responsibility of social landlords. It’s great that we now have some evidence of the impact of living in unsafe and stressful environments; but we still need to see some action to transform such places, and to address the increasing problem of poverty itself.

 

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.’

 

Happy-clappy community engagement and the politics of disadvantage

Two years and five months ago I attended the (opposition) Conservative Party launch of an idea called the big society. I must admit it took me a few days to appreciate what it meant.

Since then I’ve heard people whose views I might once have respected, express enthusiasm for – even regret for the apparent passing of – this devious and snide attempt to theorise the demolition of the public, the suffocation of community action (manifestly not its liberation) and the justification for disempowering gestures of philanthropy.

Today - thank you Patrick Butler - we have a bitter-sweet example of just what big society amounts to. Patrick reports on how Children North East, a long-established organisation with a sound reputation for serving disadvantaged young people against the odds, found that the erosion of public funding for what they do stopped, abruptly, at the pockets of the charity’s staff:

They put their hands in their pocket and paid for the children's lunches themselves. The staff set up what in effect was a mini-food bank scheme. They bought ‘a little extra’ in their weekly family shopping trip, and used it to stock up the charity's new ‘pantry’.

The article quotes tellingly from the blog of the charity's chief exec, Jeremy Cripps:

So here we have a Government without the humanity to care for very vulnerable people until they are deported by giving them even a minimal amount of money to feed their children; a local authority providing shelter for those families but forced to cut back on its spending by the Government; passing that cut on to a charity which too has to economise; the buck passes to the charity's staff who cannot stand by and do nothing while in daily contact with children in basic need of food; so they take it upon themselves to make sure children do not go hungry.

The problem I have is not that this could be any kind of surprise to anybody who has been paying attention.

What bothers me is that the emergence of circumstances like these has been accompanied by a degree of encouragement among people in the new community engagement industry, who have been happy to promote a form of community development that ignores the politics of disadvantage: lots of jolly emphasis on happy-clappy ‘community’ but no recognition of the manifest and rampant social injustices that try to make philanthropy (and by extension, depoliticised community involvement) an acceptable substitute for social responsibilities.

I have suggested before that the assimilation of selective-value community development into public policy could effectively neuter the movement and marginalise the voices of anyone who protests against political injustices that cause great need. Further, it seems to me that collusion in such policies amounts to subscribing to the demonisation of the poor. That is inexcusable.

 

Anti-social behaviour and ‘the true nature of privilege’

Last week the RSA got some publicity for their idea that people should be ‘trained in basic community safety skills,’ meaning dealing with ‘antisocial behaviour and low-level public disorder’. Ben Rogers floated the idea a couple of years ago. It builds on the history of first aid lessons, and would fit into the tradition of adult education. The paper doesn’t acknowledge the fact that community centres have been running self-defence classes for women for as long as I can remember.

As so often with the RSA there’s that uncomfortable sense of appearing to say ‘we could try doing this to people’. Suggestions need to be based firmly on what people are already trying to do for themselves, in their own neighbourhoods. And if policy is to be influenced, it might be reasonable to acknowledge the value of, and strengthen opportunities for, informal and semi-formal interaction in local spaces.

Recalling the ‘respect’ agenda (lots more here, although of course the Blair government's respect website site has disappeared) I’d note that well-meaning ideas of this kind tend to lack appreciation of what it’s actually like to live in an area where the tensions of uncivil behaviour are consistently high; or that people are and always have been working to confront disorder around them.

So we read that the proposed approach ‘relies on training and skilling people to meet social challenges, rather than always resorting to the law or police’.

‘Always’? People aren’t always resorting to the law or the police. False start, immediate disqualification.

Residents almost always are already investing in the co-production of safety, often in a context where the police and other agencies are unresponsive and the law is simply not an accessible option. What's it like living on an estate characterised by civic absence? Draining, disempowering.

Lynsey Hanley, meanwhile, has stepped forward and admonished the RSA gently in this Guardian article. She goes on to point directly at the problem of ‘the true nature of privilege’ which is that ‘it allows you to live an entirely stress-free existence, should you choose to do so.’

‘Having lived for a long time in a poor area and then, for a much shorter time, in a rich one, it strikes me that the main difference is the overwhelming sense of control and "rightness" the rich area had. Anti-social behaviour was much rarer for the simple reason that people generally had better things to do and had no wish or reason to debase themselves in public.’ 

This is what I think of as the 21st century version of 'two nations'. Lynsey goes on:

‘The point is that we cannot do the work of the state without the back-up of internal as well as external resources. A fragmented neighbourhood of stressed and transient people is not going to be able to police itself as well as a settled area of contented and confident people.’

I'm sure there is scope for Ben Rogers' idea to be grafted on to existing community initiatives. As a movement of its own, I think not.

 

Antisocial societies cause antisocial behaviour

There's been a surprising amount of recent commentary on the disturbances that took place in England a year ago. The fact that the social system is taking so long to heal illustrates clearly how sick it is.

Meanwhile the government bumbles on, not just generating inequality as fast as it can but also celebrating it. Witness the silly (and disproven) claims that state education does not produce Olympic winners because those on what are called 'the left' (apparently that term is regarded by people with expensive educations as a way of distinguishing something that is publicly funded) do not approve of competition. Reflecting on this tradition of misrepresentation I draw your attention to the way the rich and powerful historically commandeered phrases like 'fair play' while resolutely refusing to distinguish between fair and unfair competition. It's an imperialist thing, you have to invade and conquer a few countries over the centuries to know how to do it convincingly.

As if to prove the point about the disturbances, no sooner do Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson publish a straightforward article in Comment is Free than the trolls plunge in. If you have the stomach, try reading the first dozen or so responses. If you have the abs of an Olympian (irrespective of education) try going deeper.

About a year ago I suggested that those who were confounding explanation and excuse were best ignored until they’ve worked it out. It seems to be taking a while. Blaming youthful criminality and inadequate parenting doesn't get us very far. What's socially significant and really worthy of attention is the apparently high proportion of people who see that as the end of debate, 'pure and simple'.

For these people, there is no need to ask, or no point in seeking to understand, why levels of criminality and perceptions of poor parenting are so high in this country. In taking that stance, they appear to be at the same time condoning inequality and ignoring the evidence of its destructive effects. How many of them are climate change sceptics, I wonder?

The hidden wealth of informal activities

Instinctively I flinch at the phrase ‘hidden wealth of communities’ because I just think, here they come, the Haves want to take that as well.

Well it’s been tough for the rich and powerful lately and they’ve started to get a little uneasy about the rate of return on their enormous investments. And really, one can’t help thinking that poor people just have to work harder, it’s not good enough, let’s see what else we can plunder from them. What’s this social capital they have, couldn’t we make something out of that?

The model’s straightforward: if only poor people would do more with their social capital – all those network connections made in clubs and pubs and community centres, my dear fellow, places where they laugh at stuff one simply wouldn’t comprehend – public services would become obsolete or cost less to run and profit would be easier to make at the top.

Yes, it could be deemed offensive for people with lots of money to describe the social capital of people on low incomes as ‘wealth’, and then to try to exploit it. Having said that, semantic niceties aside, it does matter how local social connections give rise to informal and formal participation; and how they in turn relate to formal governance. I’d subscribe to the view put forward back in 2005 by Paul Skidmore and John Craig in Start with people (an unacknowledged precursor of some elements in current policy thinking):

‘we need to create greater value from the connections popular participation creates between public services, civil society and our structures of democratic representation.’

But it’s taking so long to get policy recognition for the value of those interactions, while all the time the third places we need for this associational life are increasingly threatened. Even the stoutest defender of the current government, and they do exist, stout ones anyway, could hardly deny the assertiveness (some might call it wanton vandalism) of its deconstruction of the public realm. It doesn’t help.

Start with people explored the connections within and beyond civil society that are forged in community organisations. So, more broadly, does this recent report from ResPublica, Clubbing together, by Keith Cooper and Caroline Macfarland, sub-titled unfortunately ‘the hidden wealth of communities’. It explores the potential for a greater ‘club-culture’ in the UK. It offers a review and a very welcome discussion of the largely forsaken place of local clubs and community centres in associational life, mostly well-written, if clearly rushed.

Will this report push the pace among policy makers, to help protect and promote local civil associations? There’s a crucial section on page 31 which refers to social impact statements and cites a Public Administration Select Committee report, ending – you might almost think inspirationally - with these points:

‘A better recognition of the hidden wealth of informal activities [that’s more like it] requires this more sophisticated understanding of how casual connections contribute to our national social capital stocks… Leisure pursuits, as ‘crucibles of casual connections’ that are purposive, pooling, and encourage inclusive social mixing, should be recognised and promoted in policy implementation as vehicles for cultivating social value.’

Yes, more please. And among the report’s recommendations there’s a strong and much-needed case made for social value impact statements. Coming from this source, it may be heard, and if there’s anything left of the public realm by the time it gets processed, some good will come of it.

Meanwhile, back on page 31, the authors break down the category of 'casual connections' and point out the need

‘to distinguish between the kinds of connections we form when engaged in purposive activity from (sic) non-purposive types of chance activity, such as bumping into friends or family at the shops or striking up conversations with strangers at bus stops.'

They note that

'Purposive casual connections are forged and fostered in situations where people indulge in activities for a particular purpose and social outcome, when engaging in sport or team activities, other competitive games such as bingo, or educational leisure such as arts classes.'

Which of course has long been one of the arguments for adult learning, so wretchedly underfunded by recent governments. I merely mention. It doesn't mean that we can dismiss ‘non-purposive casual connections': we're told that these more informal encounters

'are unlikely to lead to social actions.’ 

The word ‘directly’, inserted about four words from the end, might have helped saved this sentence, otherwise it’s an unfortunate remark which weakens the whole approach. Non-purposive casual connections are fundamental – everything else would fall over without them. It would be difficult to describe or account for social life (adapting a phrase used by David Morgan which I quoted here) without passing and fleeting acquaintances. Apart from anything else, they give rise to a lot of other encounters and activities. In social relations, the trivial is massively significant. The 2008 CLG guidance on ‘meaningful interaction’ made the same mistake. We have been here before a few times.

That is not to say that casual connections in purposive surroundings are not important, of course they are. Just don’t diss the superficial, ok? You see why this paper is such a frustrating read, by turn informative and insightful, then inadequate and misguided.

As an example of the latter, and I’m really not worked up about this, there’s a shallow section on ‘From online to face-to-face interaction’ which embarassingly fails to grasp the extent or nature of local online interaction. This would not be a problem if the authors didn’t decide to pronounce on the subject with such assumed authority.

Local social technologies have moved on a long way from ‘cyber balkanisation’ – the phenomenon whereby online participation is perceived to cluster around interest not locality (and no, Putnam didn’t coin the term, it goes back at least to Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson in 1996. I published something on this in New statesman in about 99. It's past).

Just a glance at Keith Hampton’s work, well-known as the leading researcher in this field, would have helped; or even some extensive, well-respected, ahem, home-grown UK primary research carried out a couple of years ago. After that, when chapter four begins on the premiss that 'individuals have adapted their group behaviours to changing socio-cultural and technological environments' without reference to Barry Wellman and networked individualism, it's hard to retain much confidence.

Where I feel this paper fails most, however, is at what may be the most difficult task, which is explaining what the traditional concept of membership means in the network society. Is association through membership, with or without the tradition of unionism, co-operatives and mutual societies, an anachronism or a social necessity? Personally I suspect it's a characteristic of hierachical societies dominated by organisations rather than networks, but I'm ready to be persuaded otherwise. In spite of an interesting section on ‘From consumers to members’, this paper doesn’t get near an answer.

My sense of disappointment in the squandered opportunity of this paper is barely allayed by the possibility that ResPublica's access to policy makers might have some effect. Perhaps shrewdly, they adopted a smart technique to promote the report among people in positions of power, while discouraging those in community development or community action from taking any notice – they got Eric Pickles to launch it. 

But still, the unexpected attention on clubs is welcome. My excellent friend Ruth Cherrington, an authority on working men’s clubs, will doubtless be as pleased as the rest of us that at last some policy attention might be paid to the ‘untapped value’ of ‘membership environments’. But only a big society sleepwalker would overlook the likelihood that there would be attempts to capture and exploit a celebration of ordinary people’s community lives mutually-constructed against the odds.

With a couple of exceptions, the recommendations are disappointingly unambitious, characterised by the customary passing of the buck to local authorities, using the standard reality-blind formula of ‘local authorities need to consider [insert  favourite topic] as an alternative to closure’.

Maybe that last phrase, ‘alternative to closure’, needs a little more reflection among right wing think tanks. Taking the right's approach to public libraries as an example - often offered as one of the key reasons for the tories to get a thorough hammering as soon as moderate middle class people can get to the polling stations – it’s worth noting that an alternative to closure is sometimes, ahem, keeping things open.

(My dear chap, why didn’t we think of that?)

And that's it really - arguing for investment in informal social networks is vital but seems pointless in a policy context dominated by the demolition of the public. 

One last thought. I mentioned Skidmore and Craig’s Start with people, an uneven work but one that should not be overlooked. With all the recent fuss about the ‘innovation’ of localism as if it were an invention of this government, you might be surprised to read this on p88 – published seven years ago:

‘subject to certain safeguards, if local communities can demonstrate sufficient popular support they should be granted a right of initiative to propose a local intervention and require local authorities to bring forth a proposal and vote on it.’

Even their best ideas aren't new.

 

Povertyism in policy: ‘troubled families’

Here’s a good example of the distortion that can happen in that murky space between research and policy.

There are purported to be between 117,000 and 120,000 'families with multiple problems'. Last week Louise Casey, the government’s adviser on ‘troubled families’, appeared to be basing policy on interviews with sixteen pre-selected families. Eight of the sixteen families had four or more children. Seven had five or more, while two families had nine and twelve children respectively. Were they representative, and if so, of what?

Inevitably, eyebrows are raised because we know how it works: you have a political steer and a theory – in this case, the sceptic might say, the theory concerns families that deviate from the Surrey-Oxfordshire norm, not least by being poor – and you find the evidence to support it.

This is also an example of the government's presented style of pragmatic understanding of issues: not unwelcome if done properly. Casey shows aggressive determination to be doing ‘the right thing’ (a favourite coalition hollow phrase) which is ‘to get our sleeves rolled up nationally, locally and in these people's lives.’ Many of those whose lives she wants to get stuck in and change

‘have large families and keep having children, often with different fathers, even if they are struggling to cope with the children they already have.’

Well, this government still funds independent researchers, I'm pleased to say, so let’s hear what one of them has to say, while we still can. In a paper on the ESRC’s Poverty and social exclusion website, Ruth Levitas summarises Casey’s presentation of the problem as

‘one of large families by multiple partners forming a burgeoning dysfunctional underclass resistant to reform.’

But Levitas says that from what we know of the sample, having ‘loads of children’ cannot be shown to be one of the characteristics of families with multiple problems. Nor are the children from these families ‘overwhelmingly likely to be involved in crime and anti-social behaviour or be excluded from school.’

The accepted definition of a family with multiple problems is one that has five of the following seven characteristics:

No parent in the family is in work;

Family lives in overcrowded housing;

No parent has any qualifications;

Mother has mental health problems;

At least one parent has a long-standing limiting illness, disability or infirmity;

Family has low income (below 60% of median income);

Family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items.

So it’s reasonable to ask why Casey has picked out some other feature, assumed rather than evidence-based, on which to focus.

Some large families on low incomes, with or without multiple problems, will be trembling at her threatened approach, like aboriginals at the appearance of armed self-righteous missionaries. And the rest of us will continue to be subjected to the poisonous message that poor people who have lots of children are a burden, requiring a muscular 'sort-you-lot-out' approach from the haves.

Previously:

It's the poverty, stupid

It's the povertyism, stupid

 

 

Adult learning and social relationships

The social and health benefits of adult learning are hardly in doubt, and now they've been quantified. 

In a report for Niace, Valuing the impact of adult learning, Daniel Fujiwara found that, for adults, participating in a part-time course leads to:

• improvements in health, which has a value of £148 to the individual;
• a greater likelihood of finding a job and/or staying in a job, which has a value of £224 to the individual;
• better social relationships, which has a value of £658 to the individual; and
• a greater likelihood that people volunteer on a regular basis, which has a value of £130 to the individual.

So will this lead at last to some sensible government investment in community education? Might there be a policy maker somewhere who wants to see an increase in the proportion of the population who are healthier, more content, have more supportive networks, are more employable and who contribute to society? Non? Oh well, just thought I’d ask.

Previously:

Adult learning: why it matters

Community engagement and trust in government

A couple of years ago I was told a story about residents in a rural farming area who objected to plans for a wind farm, got very organised and vocal, and saw off the proposals.

My first reaction was to reach for the old quote from the days of Thatcherism – ‘you wonder if the middle ages will ever come to an end.’

Then more practically I reflected on the apparent likelihood that while the objection was presented as an argument against wind power – and it’s hard to sustain that argument for long – it was really an objection to surrendering certain rights to land and its value.

It seems that, while this farming-based network was sufficiently well-armed with hayforks and tradition to stomp up to the city hall and stop proceedings, they hadn’t worked out that the same community energy could generate collective income from the process and retain ownership. Oh, and generate renewable energy at the same time – although in this case that doesn’t seem to have been a consideration.

I was reminded of this by the news (via Planning daily) that the House of Commons science and technology committee says that giving communities more ownership of local energy infrastructure by offering shares in projects 'could be conducive to building trust and acceptance'.

You don't say? But there’s a catch. Here in one paragraph from the summary is how far the committee has come and, towards the end, where it’s headed:

‘Community benefits are an important way of building trust and negotiations can enable the public to feel a greater sense of control, choice over and ownership of energy projects. We encourage the further use of current community engagement processes led by energy companies, working with local government and the public, for building trust around nuclear new build proposals.’

What a falling off was there. You can get precisely the same effect with the next paragraph:

‘We were impressed by a citizen partnership model being developed in Germany for wind farms and suggest that enabling communities to feel more ownership of local energy infrastructure by offering shares in projects could be conducive to building trust and acceptance. Partnership models could form part of community benefits discussions for new nuclear build and other energy infrastructure.’

Well, if your government favours nuclear energy, would you rather have policy to promote it without community engagement, or policy that required it?

But it is hard to read this without suspecting that they want the phrases ‘community engagement processes’ and ‘community benefits discussions’ to mean ‘coercion’. We want people to have a say in deciding on what we want them to decide on.

The problem is that the closer that policy gets to ordinary people, the more barriers to trust it seems to have to build. In my lifetime I have witnessed how, first, people lost trust in government as detached-authority which did not see the need to consult; then how, more recently, government that consulted without engagement lost more trust where it had expected to gain it; and now I fear we are beginning to see how government adopting spurious ‘engagement processes’ will further drain the depleted reservoirs of public trust to critical levels.

 

Neighbourhoods are both physical and social environments

This is helpful, from Rob Wheway on the Guardian’s public leader’s network this morning:

‘Neighbourliness happens without payment and would be categorised as voluntary. Politicians and staff assume this means the voluntary sector, which leads them to focus on the services that local and national charities provide, rather than considering what factors in the social and physical environment make people more likely to be neighbourly...’

‘It is not fear of stranger danger that makes the difference; it is the dominance of the car which limits neighbourliness...’

And especially his last para:

‘We need to understand more of how we create both the physical and social environment in which people feel sufficiently secure, empowered and valued to be more neighbourly and more active citizens.’

Neighbourhoods are both physical and social environments and the more we live in a network society, the more neighbourly behaviour is likely to be distinguishable from other relations.

So please can we have a considered, informed, practice-oriented debate on Rob's last point, bringing together planners, architects, social care managers, youth workers, resident activists, resident non-activists, housing association officers, community development workers… And policy makers.

 

Neighbourhood planning is already being ‘re-thought’

Today saw the publication of a paper from ResPublica in association with the RIBA on Re-thinking neighbourhood planning: from consultation to collaboration.

Start with the document title and allow yourself a wee smile. Neighbourhood planning was introduced not much more than a year ago, but apparently this is long enough for it to need ‘re-thinking’ – by an organisation whose director is an acknowledged influence on contemporary Tory policy.

Then consider this: the paper argues that

‘involving communities in planning on a collaborative, rather than purely consultative basis will not only lead to more successful developments, it can also generate social capital and value…’

It’s really a bit scary if, as implied, neighbourhood planning policy hitherto had not absorbed this basic community development principle. I guess I haven’t been paying attention. It’s not clear how this cultural shift in understanding will be brought about.

But it gets better, and there’s a welcome emphasis on developing some SROI indicators. Among other recommendations it suggests that the government should:

‘appoint an independent panel of experts to define the metrics and structures required to capture the social value created through the neighbourhood planning process.’

And should accumulate evidence to:

‘create future economic indicators that can be used to monitor the social impact of neighbourhood planning as part of a ‘total neighbourhood’ approach.’

Bring on the total neighbourhood approach. Government, it is suggested, should also put in place

‘the legal framework to introduce a ‘Neighbourhood Consultation Deposit’ paid up-front on committing to a Neighbourhood Partnership Agreement, as a prerequisite for the planning application process. This should be used to fund the collaboration process and independent support for Neighbourhood Forums.’

One last thought. The words ‘expert’ and ‘expertise’ are used quite a lot in the paper, reminding me that there’s an overlooked skirmish going on in some of the dirty impasses of contemporary public policy: a fierce tussle between (often entrenched) professional defence of ‘standards,’ and political determination to break them down. (I have some sympathy with the politicians here, strongly favouring as I do an anti-professional ethos in community development and being distrustful of the way some professions become preoccupied with their own status). Oh that reminds me, by way of example, elsewhere today, the battle lines have been more firmly drawn on the question of volunteers replacing the specialised roles of staff who work in libraries. 

Planning is complex (unavoidably?) and the paper acknowledges that neighbourhood planning cannot move forward without an appropriate revision – but certainly not an abandonment - of the relation between resident and expert. This is not new but its restatement from this kind of source is very welcome.

 

Local people defending the public realm? Deny them access to toilets!

Here’s a torrid story told by Adam Langleben of how one council – the infamous Barnet council in north London – chose to behave corporately in the face of a few residents seeking to defend their local library against a devious closure tactic. The officials’ sense of exclusive ownership over the property, including toilets, water and electricity supplies, shows a remarkably weak grasp of the notion of a public building.

Further, the council’s poor handling of the entire process is shown up, surprise surprise, by the use of social media. As Adam writes:

‘you cannot simply push around residents, lie to residents and expect them to simpl[y] take this.’

Part of the problem seems to be that Barnet council have signed up to some religious mumbo-jumbo which claims that the private sector runs things more efficiently than the public sector, de facto. Even if this were true – and there’s enough evidence (e.g.) to have discredited it long ago, if everyday experience were not sufficient – there’s a small question of the meaning and value of a public realm.

What matters now is for some of us to start thinking about how we restore services as public services - not products that people who can afford them, buy, or that are subject to the big society model of a miserable suspended animation, kept breathing artificially and fitfully through inadequate and unpredictable resources and expertise.

Social justice is no longer available

‘People come together through day-to-day activities, not 'integration projects' which too often feel irrelevant and prove unsustainable… Central to this will be ensuring that the integration benefits of programmes and projects are recognised and supported.’

These sentences come from a paper on Creating the conditions for integration published yesterday by DCLG. They suggest, first, that the government recognises the value of interactions in everyday life, so it must place value on a public realm where such integration can be stimulated and take place. That's a relief, the sceptic might have been wondering.

Secondly it suggests that the government values the evaluation and demonstration of 'integration benefits' where they can be shown to have occurred. That's good too ain't it?

The paper raises a few other points. First – I don’t think I have a problem with using the word integration rather than, say, cohesion (which is what we’d have expected in the past): but it might be interesting to ask why, why the change in vocabulary? At the Institute of Community Cohesion, they know about some of this stuff: do they feel snubbed, I wonder?

Second – is there an understanding that social injustice, poverty and unequal access to power and influence might be critical barriers to integration and should be part of the equation? (Answer, no).

Third – at least three times in the paper the following phrase is used: ‘We want to hear further ideas for action…’ but there is no channnel offered, no named author with contact details on the document, only the switchboard number for the entire department. Somebody’s not being sincere.

And on the question of social justice, here’s some curious news. A week ago the DWP set up a survey to help define social justice (be quick if you want to catch that link):

'The government will shortly publish a social justice strategy paper, detailing a new approach to it. This will define what social justice means to the government, and principles and current practice underlying activity in this area. The government would like to know what social justice means to different stakeholder organisations, so would like organisations to complete a short survey.'

If you follow the link now, this (at the moment) is what you see:

This survey is no longer available.

Please contact ( ) for further assistance..

 

 

High street blues

The government-led approach to regeneration through competitions and 'challenges' is becoming a flood-threatening piss-take. When I heard about the 'Portas pilots' - a scheme for twelve towns to bid to become 'areas with the vision and enthusiasm to breathe new life into what should be the beating heart of their communities' according to Grant Shapps - forget the dreadful rhetoric, I must have misread the amount available.

Not unreasonably, I feel. One million pounds each might have been meaningful, but not between the lot. If politicians and central government officials want to complain about the use local government officers make of their time, it's worth asking them (a) why they spend their own time coming up with incontestably crap schemes like this, and (b) do they or do they not expect a lot of officials to spend time developing bids that ultimately will not be successful?

Once upon a time we had policy and strategy on social issues, now we have 'innovation', 'challenges' and 'pilots'. Here's David Marlow's take on the government approach, from Regen & Renewal:

'the pattern of their approach to economic development has now been clear for some time. In default of a coherent strategy, they come up with an ad hoc announcement, with derisory funding, to give the appearance of leadership.'

 

Neighbourhood care groups

Neighbourhood care groups and organisations provide an astonishing social resource which seldom penetrates the policy-media consciousness. Some I know a little about, such as Brighton and Hove Neighbourhood Care Scheme, and Tower Hamlets Friends and Neighbours (where I was a trustee for a while). Now, thanks to Bernard Leach, erstwhile head of sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, I’ve been learning a little about a group which has been active in Chorlton, Manchester for 44 years.

Chorlton Good Neighbours (CGN) was established in 1967 by local people and has evolved to become a well-established charity offering a range of services to local older people. It currently has over 250 users and 70 volunteers. The group offers a range of practical support including transport and odd jobs for example; and various activities such as exercise classes, cooking sessions, and trips out.

CGN recently carried out their own research with a view to capturing the benefits that are generated by organising care collectively and providing a context for volunteers. The research was based on a survey which asked about levels of confidence to meet and socialise; health, well-being, independence and self-worth; sources of information and advice; sense of safety; and feelings of involvement. This exercise illustrates the great value in having high quality informal local arrangements for people in need of help and support. Take this quote for instance:

‘there is also a policy of ringing up people if for example, they don’t turn up for sessions they normally come to, or if a volunteer notices when delivering a newsletter that there is a lot of mail uncollected... We go the extra step, not just because it is the correct professional thing to do, but because volunteers and users know each other and care for each other.’

Or consider the chart below, which hints at the benefits felt from the range of activities run by the group:

The report suggests that:

‘Overall, the evidence base points to the conclusion that CGN’s activities do change users’ attitudes, lifestyles and their mental and physical wellbeing. It is reasonable to go on to conclude that such care services can lead to significant savings for both the NHS and the Local Authority’s Social Services…

Core activities such as home visits, wheelchair support, coffee morning, Sunday teas and day trips will remain at the heart of what we deliver as they provide a haven of friendship and support – neighbourliness – which enrich the lives of all those involved with Chorlton Good Neighbours.’

 For more details about the report, contact Bernard Leach – btleach { at } gmail.com.

Taxes and governmental powers: what are they for?

When I dropped out of school and went into ‘the world of work’, as it used to be called, I remember being disturbed by the fact that the education system left me utterly ignorant of what government and local government do, and what taxation is for. It looks like things have got little better, in spite of the introduction of citizenship to the curriculum.

Yup, it’s time for a bit of seasonal gloom, with the British Social Attitudes report published today and plenty of publicity given to this statistic:

The proportion who think we should pay (more) taxes to improve health and education and social benefits is only 30% in England, 40% in Scotland. A decade ago it was 60% in both nations. (BBC)

Like a separating galaxy, it looks like we are moving at speed away from the traditional civilising notion of the ‘common weal’. (In case you missed it, here’s the link to requirements for people who don’t want to pay taxes).

Do people who think like this imagine, for instance, that business could function without publicly maintained roads and systematically tested vehicles, or a managed wider economy? Or that the police could maintain order without some sort of funding; or that the food and water they consume could be guaranteed to be hygienic without public agencies? Perhaps it does not occur to them?

Ah wait, perhaps what really bugs them is that poverty is self-imposed, not structural:

63% believed parents who don't want to work were to blame for children living in poverty.

I suggest you blink hard, and re-read that figure: almost two thirds.

According to Mark Easton on the BBC site today, the UK ‘has long been the most judgmental of the needy in Europe.’ In a way, that’s a relief; but yes we do seem determined, disastrously, to become more and more like the US. Income inequality is increasing, with a government apparently comfortable with polarisation. And we seem to be a bit angry too.

Dark age ahead, as Jane Jacobs warned. Jane listed five pillars of culture including ‘taxes and governmental powers that are directly in touch with needs and possibilities’. But civilisation will pay a heavy price if too few citizens really appreciate what they’re for.

 

A new age of collective action?

 

According to a reporter on R4’s Today programme this morning, one trade union has seen membership increase by 11,000 in the past three months. So while the coalition government is determinedly polarising British life, by making no effort to constrain the vulgar greed of the wealthy while patronisingly clobbering the least well off, it’s proving quite efficient at stimulating collective action.

So this ‘rebuke to an elite that gives money to banks at the expense of the poor’ might just be an unanticipated manifestation of big society, for those who remember it. And there’s nowt like a bit of class confrontation to help take your mind off the niceties of economic forecasting.

Meanwhile it’s fun to scan through the 102 things not to do if you hate taxes – for example, ‘Do not walk or run on sidewalks… Do not expect to be able to vote on election days.’ (Via Diane Dyson).

Maybe those of us who believe in the importance for civilisation of some things being public, and who resent the systematic erosion of that principle by the Haves, should keep a short version of this list in our pockets as a handout for those moments when we encounter these people – which is always in public space of course.