Local authorities local duties and local action for circulation

“Local government (is) in essencethe first line of defence thrown upby the community against ourcommon enemies – poverty,sickness, ignorance, isolation,mental derangement and socialmaladjustment”

Winifred Holtby, 1936

Child Poverty: local authorities, local duties & local action

Background“Poverty should not be a birthright. Being poor should not be a lifesentence. We need to sow the seeds of ambition in the young. Our historicaim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty, and itwill take a generation. It is a 20 year mission but I believe it can be done”Tony Blair (1999)The Child Poverty Act which achieved Royal Assent on 25th March 2010“requires responsible local authorities and their partner authorities tocooperate to reduce, and mitigate the effects of, child poverty in their localareas”

The reportMethodology:• Documentary data produced by Local Authorities in response to the local duties• This includes Child Poverty Needs Assessments, Child Poverty Strategies (both ‘stand-alone and ‘embedded/integrated’ strategies), reports and minutes of relevant meetings• All 12 Local Authorities in the North East provided information in support of the report.• Thematic analysis carried out on priorities and actions identified in the Child Poverty Strategies

Part 1…..

Raising Aspirations

Raising Aspirations“…revealed low aspiration levels in some areas of (LA area), in manycases as a result of second and third generation family unemployment …further work … has shown low aspiration to underpin many ‘negativeoutcomes’ such as poor attainment, teenage conceptions and anti-socialbehaviour.” “There are parents in (LA area) who have had bad experience of schoolingand do not see the benefit of education; this attitude perpetuates thecontinuous cycle of low aspirations”“Transforming the aspirations and ambitions of children growing up inpoverty and their families is essential if we are to tackle child poverty”

Raising Aspirations“The widespread emphasis on raising aspirations, in particular, does notseem to be a good foundation for policy or practice. Teachers and otherprofessionals may need to revise upwards their estimation of theaspirations of parents and children.”“Young people had high aspirations; they wanted to go to university andattain professional and managerial jobs in greater numbers than thelabour market could fulfil. There was little evidence of fatalism facedwith depressed labour markets, or of a belief that not working wasacceptable”“Many working-class parents were strongly exercised by their children’sformal education, saw it as necessary to a good start in life, andmanifested a strategic orientation towards their children’s educationalsuccess. Other working-class parents manifested a more limited sense ofefficacy in influencing their children’s educational future.”

Raising Aspirations

Reducing worklessness“We will work towards enabling people to break the cycle of benefitdependency; encouraging a culture of work in every household”“Improve parents’ skills portfolio … Action is required to support parents /carers of children living in poverty to develop the skills and qualificationsto enter and progress in employment.”“highlighted a number of areas of concern … the problems of cultures oflow aspiration and worklessness in some of our communities”

Reducing worklessness

Reducing worklessnessIain Duncan Smith (15 March 2011)“And those who have no interest in work……because they have seen their parents, theirneighbours and their entire community sit on benefitsfor life……have simply had their destructive lifestyleconfirmed..”

Reducing worklessness“Perhaps one of the strongest single findings of the study is thatinterviewees, trapped in the low pay, no-pay cycle over years expressedgreat personal commitment to employment”“Pre-occupation with supply side issues … often dramatically over-estimates what skills policy can achieve. This is because it totally neglectsthe issue of whether, and how, increasingly well-educated citizens havetheir skills deployed in the workplace”“employers were content to keep jobs low skill and foundlittle difficulty in filling vacancies. Given their current product andproduction strategies there was limited demand for a more skilledworkforce … even if the prospects of some workers are improved, it willbe at the expense of others, as long as the structure of jobs and of theirdesign remains unaltered.”

Reducing worklessness Table 1: The number of JSA, ESA, IBSDA and IS claimants of working age split by statistical group and duration of oldest claim in the North East November 2010 Up to 3 3 months 6 months 1 year and 2 years and 5 years and 10 Years All months up to up to up to up up to and overRegion 6 months 1 year 2 years to 5 years 10 YearsNorth East All 265,610 50,530 26,320 26,830 27,080 35,720 35,970 63,160 Job Seeker 76,590 36,670 16,200 12,730 8,950 1,800 200 50 ESA and incapacity benefits 144,190 9,680 6,300 8,720 10,400 22,550 28,650 57,880 Lone Parent 32,770 2,370 2,600 4,090 6,230 9,100 5,300 3,070 Carer 7,340 540 470 780 1,020 1,570 1,300 1,660 Others on income related benefit 4,730 1,270 740 520 480 700 520 510

Early Intervention“Ensure that children that live in poverty are safe”“Investigate the feasibility of establishing a Families at Risk Team”“develop integrated neighbourhood models of service to re-target anddeliver Early Years and Early Intervention”“improve early identification of child poverty including integrated familysupport and staff training”

Early Intervention“It would, in our view, be fallacious to conclude that because there is anassociation between parenting and poverty that the solution to poverty isto encourage (or force) poor parents to emulate their middle-class peersrather than address structural inequality in societyOn the other hand, the balance of evidence in this review suggests thatattempts to change parenting style, practices or beliefs by simply raisingthe income of parents are likely to fail. The way that parents relate totheir children does not simply arise out of economic adversity oradvantage.”“By arguing that ‘what is needed is a much wider culture change towardsrecognising the importance of parenting’, the (National CP) strategy ratherunfortunately begins to fall very quickly into the popular, but completelyerroneous, trap of equating child poverty with poor and irresponsibleparenting”

Maximizing household income“Helping families to maximise their income … Ensuring that all families areable to access debt and financial advice … Ensuring that families are awarethat energy providers can provide social tariffs … Promoting financialliteracy in school and with parents … Encouraging employers to promotefinancial literacy as part of their workforce strategies.”“Increase the focus on financial inclusion to reduce debt and increaseaccess to affordable credit, including benefit take up”“plan for and mitigate the effects of welfare reform by establishing a coregroup of relevant organisations to identify impacts of welfare reforms onresidents and appropriate organisational responses”

Maximizing household income“many of the poor are very good managers of their poverty. They areresourceful and use their money and time with great expediency. They areprecise about planning household accounts and ruthless aboutexpenditure, savagely cutting back to keep out of debt. They set prioritiesand cut out luxuries. Despite this they understandably describe such workas sacrifice and relentless struggle.”“in general, poor people manage their finances with care, skill andresourcefulness. There is no evidence to suggest that there are two typesof poor families – those who can cope and those who can’t”“Sometimes I go swimming. Things like that I feel bad about doing.Because of the cost, it’s a fiver to go swimming. It’s just a fiver thatprobably doesn’t really exist, it should go on food”

Improving health and wellbeing“Health initiatives to promote healthy living, advice and support inlocalities.”“increase the birth weight of babies and increase the uptake ofbreastfeeding to maximise the babies’ life chances”“encouraging healthy choices and behaviours can create the conditions inwhich children and young people are able to realise their potential.”

Improving health and wellbeing“Once you accept that crap food is an economic, not a moral choice, youhave to accept a whole raft of unpleasant outcomes as a function ofdeprivation, not an illustration of a lack of backbone”“There is no good reason, other than because of our greed and ignorance,for … mortality rates to be higher for children from poor families”“Having insufficient money to lead a healthy life is a highly significantcause of health inequalities … In England there are gaps between aminimum income for healthy living and the level of state benefitpayments that many groups receive.”

Improving health and wellbeing (75 years ago)“Poverty and Public Health was a groundbreaking empirical study whichchallenged the Conservative–Liberal political orthodoxy of the time thatconsidered the link between poverty, nutrition and mortality to be thefecklessness of poor mothers who either squandered their money or weretoo ignorant to provide healthy meals.”“His Stockton studies showed clearly that the vast majority of poorerfamilies, whether employed or unemployed, did not have an incomethat was sufficient to sustain a diet that was adequate to ward off diseaseand death: poverty, not ignorance, was the cause of morbidity andmortality amongst the poor and this poverty was not the fault of theindividual families but of a society that provided inadequate wages andwelfare benefits.”

Improving health and wellbeing “It’s more expensive to buy strawberries than it is to buy a whole pizza”

Improving neighbourhoods“Focusing attention on the most deprived areas in (LA area), wherefamilies face a multitude of problems”“address poor quality family housing in our most deprivedneighbourhoods to ensure all children grow up in a healthy and safe homeenvironment”“mitigate the effects of fuel poverty”“High quality green spaces for play … Exciting, safe play areas andequipment”

Improving neighbourhoods

‘Child Poverty proofing’ strategies“Make child and family poverty everybody’s business through adoptingan approach to ‘child and family poverty proof’ Strategic Plans of allPartners as routine practice”“it is important that all organisations working for families in (LA area) areinvolved in developing a Child Poverty Strategy.”

Summary“Poverty is expressed in the form of unacceptable behaviours deviatingfrom the respectable‘ behavioural norms of dominant society or asdysfunctional to standards of conformity, for instance as the deprived ordepraved lifestyle of a subculture or underclass. The inadequacy ofpeoples power over resources is seen as irrelevant to the question ofhow they behave.”“The focus is on the poor not on society as a whole”“Othering can be understood as a discursive practice which shapes howthe ‘non-poor’ think and talk about and act towards ‘the poor’ at both aninterpersonal and an institutional level”“it is most important to find whether the over-confident division of thepopulation into ‘we the people’ and ‘they the poor’ has to be modified”

Part 2…

What’s not in the report“All too easily the social scientist can be the unwittingservant of contemporary social values, and in the studyof poverty, this can have disastrous practicalconsequences. He may side with the dominant ormajority view of the poor. If, by contrast, he feelsobliged or is encouraged from the start to make aformal distinction between scientific and conventionalperspectives, he is more likely to enlarge knowledge bybringing to light information which has been neglectedand create more elbow room for alternative forms ofaction”

Institutional behaviour• The ‘relentless rise’ of in-work poverty• “Services for the poor will always be poor services”• Co-production – “involves reclaiming territory for the core economy – territory lost to the commodification of life by all sectors of the monetary economy, public, private and non- profit.”• Localised elements of welfare reform - “Councils in England could choose to protect entitlements to council tax support and fill the funding gap from elsewhere, as the Scottish government is doing”

Deprivation“Deprivation may be defined as a state of observable and demonstrabledisadvantage relative to the local community or the wider society or nationto which an individual, family or group belongs”Of children living in low income families in the NE:• 34% could not afford a holiday away from home at least 1 week a year• 8% could not afford swimming at least once a month• 20% could not afford enough bedrooms for every child over 10“Children who have friends over for tea once a fortnight and those who goswimming once a month are more likely to be happy … Children who havetheir own bedroom, bike or other leisure equipment are also happier”

The right to be heard“The worst thing about living in poverty is the way it gives otherspermission to treat you – as if you don’t matter”“The worst blow of all is the contempt of your fellow citizens. I andmany families live in that contempt”“We hear how the media, and some politicians, speak about us andit hurts”

The right to be heard“Child poverty and social exclusion are a denial of children’s fundamentalhuman rights, which can affect their development today and underminethe realisation of their full potential in the future. An approach to povertybased on fundamental rights shifts the focus from needs and charity toensuring socially and legally guaranteed entitlements for children”“… offers the potential to orientate current policy debates in positivedirections. Primarily, the use of rights-based language shifts the focuswithin these debates from the personal failures of the ‘poor’ to a focuson the macroeconomic structures and policies implemented by nationstates and international bodies’”

Conclusions“a colossal gap between rhetoric and reality”“improving social mobility is the principal goal of theCoalition Government’s social policy.”“If, by contrast, he feels obliged or is encouraged fromthe start to make a formal distinction between scientificand conventional perspectives, he is more likely toenlarge knowledge by bringing to light informationwhich has been neglected and create more elbowroom for alternative forms of action”

Small steps…….1. Use – and add to – the evidence base2. Examine institutional behaviour – ‘do no harm’3. Give people living in poverty a voice “(people in poverty) don’t need to be taught and they don’t need to be told. They need to be trusted, respected and heard.”

“Local government (is) in essencethe first line of defence thrown upby the community against ourcommon enemies – poverty,sickness, ignorance, isolation,mental derangement and socialmaladjustment”

Contact detailss.j.crossley@durham.ac.ukwww.nechildpoverty.org.uk(0191) 334 9107

Local authorities local duties and local action for circulation

by North East Child Poverty on Oct 23, 2012

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Local authorities local duties and local action for circulation Presentation Transcript