Helping the hopeless

For too long there has been an accepted view that some people will always be excluded from the lives of the rest of society. Too often Christ’s statement ‘the poor will always be with us’ has been seen as a description of historical necessity rather than an injunction to maintain a relationship with deprived people in our hearts. We must not paint a picture of a poor with no aspiration, no desire for a better life, who deserve to be where they are.

I don’t believe this is the case, and neither does this New Labour government. Our Social Exclusion Action Plan, launched on 11 September 2006 following a scene-setting lecture by the prime minister at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in York the week before, takes our efforts to tackle poverty and provide equality of opportunity to another level.

In the last nine years we have turned the tide of unemployment, under-investment in public services and the social collapse of the 1980s: between 1979 and 1997 unemployment doubled, homelessness doubled and child poverty trebled. This growth in social injustice was too often seen as a by-product of a prosperous society. The economic growth of the 1980s coincided with a massive growth in relative poverty. Under Major, the growth in relative poverty stopped, but only because everyone’s income growth stalled. Behind the fig-leaf of the theory of the ‘trickle-down’ of wealth, the Tories sought to convince us that the deepening poverty of some was the inevitable price of economic growth.

Since then we have lifted 800,000 children and a million pensioners out of poverty. Unlike the Tories we used wealth generated by a stable and growing economy to invest heavily in public services to create a virtuous circle of increasing capability. Educational attainment has risen and the minimum wage and tax credits are tackling poverty pay. Sure Start and childhood endowment initiatives ensure that more youngsters have a good start in life.

We have put social justice and equality of opportunity at the heart of the government’s mission. And we have changed the attitudes and social landscape of this country. We no longer accept that exclusion is the price we have to pay for economic growth.

Absolute poverty has halved since 1997, and we have learnt that for a small minority (about 2.5% of the population) the barriers are not only economic. They also include subtler forms of barriers, such as social and cultural capitals that the rest of us take for granted: their poverty is not just about poverty of income, it is also the difficulty of linking aspiration to opportunity.

These subtle barriers help to explain why even some of our most ambitious programmes, which have generally benefited the poorest the most, have not reached the most excluded. Their deprivation is complex, entrenched and often passed between generations.

It is only now, in the third term of a Labour government — a situation we have never been in before — that we are able to try and tackle this. Nine consecutive years of investment, reform and rising incomes for 95% of the population means that we know what works, we know what doesn’t work and we see more starkly the persistent and deep-seated exclusion of a small minority as others progress around them.

No government in the past has had our opportunity — or our determination — to reach out to the most severely excluded.

This policy recognises the failure of one-size-fits-all services that do not work for everyone. Some people have had bad experiences of the state and are consequently mistrustful. Some people are very badly damaged, have complex needs, and their many disadvantages work together to make having the aspiration to succeed very difficult. And it is also about realising we do need people to take responsibility themselves; we do need to challenge behaviour and we should expect some response.

Analysis shows that long before a child enters school, behaviours are established and risks experienced that profoundly influence a child’s life chances. A range of factors — household poverty, poor maternal health, home environment, family life and parenting can have dramatic effects on social and cognitive development and can contribute to potentially harmful patterns of behaviour. It would be negligent for us as a community to stand back until problems become entrenched and deeply damaging to the individuals concerned, as well as to wider society.

That is why in our action plan — Reaching Out — we announced ten health-led parenting support demonstration projects from pre-birth to age two. Health visitors and midwives can play a pivotal role at a time when parents are typically highly receptive to external advice and support; so we will look at the role they could play in these demonstration projects and will support their up-skilling in support of this.

Early intervention is a priority. We will also take action where exclusion is already visible. Disproportionately represented within the 1.3 million people we identified as excluded are looked-after children, teenage parents and adults with multiple needs, especially mental health problems. These are the hardest to reach — they have the most complex and intractable needs, and failure to work with them to improve their lives costs society dear.

We will publish a green paper for looked-after children in the autumn that will seek to improve their opportunities. At the moment, if you are a child in care, the odds are stacked against you. Despite improvements, only one in ten gets five good GSCEs compared with six out of ten other children.

And if you are a teen parent, by the age of 30 you are 22% more likely to be living in poverty with no qualifications than a mother giving birth aged 24 or over. You will have three times the rate of post-natal depression and a higher risk of poor mental health for three years after the birth. And the risk of infant mortality to your baby is 60% higher.

This is not acceptable, and is why last week Beverley Hughes, minister of state for children, announced a bold strategy focused on those areas that have seen rises in teenage pregnancy rates, despite the 11% reduction in teenage pregnancy rates since 1997.

The most chronically excluded adults are likely to be unemployed, lacking skills or qualifications, have mental health problems or personality disorders, be persistent offenders, have housing problems and be drug or alcohol misusers. Good work is already being done through a wide range of programmes, including ‘Supporting People’ which enables over one million vulnerable people to live independently. And I was proud to play my role as local government minister in the 73% reduction in the number of rough sleepers since 1998.

The needs of this group are complex, and their engagement with services is chaotic. Services which are focused on delivering to the majority are not well set up to address the needs of those with the more complex problems. This is why we must personalise our services. Each agency tries to manage the aspects of the individual’s needs that fall within their remit, and funding is fragmented. The cost of this is high; case studies show that such adults are often in contact with ten agencies, costing tens of thousands of pounds a year in all. Yet their poor outcomes continue.

We will pilot new approaches to improving the outcomes of these adults, including better information sharing, multi-agency working, budget-holding lead practitioners and better performance management.

Government can’t do it all. We want to build on the really good work being undertaken by local authorities and voluntary organisations. Our responsibility as government is to ensure that those most in need get the most effective service, whoever delivers it — and we recognise that often the voluntary sector can reach out to people in a way the state never can.

We will not shirk our obligations. The Tories are seeking to abdicate government responsibility under a veil of statements of support for the voluntary sector. We want to work in partnership.

Most of all, it is about working with individuals and we need to ensure services are delivered with them — not done to them. It’s about care and skill and personalisation. Services must find out how to tap into the aspirations of even the most excluded of our people. They have aspirations — I don’t believe there is anyone who doesn’t want a better life for themselves or their family. We have helped many people to achieve this over the last nine years. Our action plan shows that we are the government that refuses to write anyone off. And we won’t.

Hilary Armstrong is Minister for the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion. ‘Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion’ can be found at: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/social_exclusion_task_force/ reaching_out/