Series: CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy
Poverty is still a real issue within Britain today and this essential series provides evidence-based insights into how communities and families are dealing with it.
Published in conjunction with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics, this series draws together fresh research and sheds important light on the impact of anti-poverty policy, focusing on the individual and social factors that promote regeneration, recovery and renewal.
CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy
This chapter explores communities within neighbourhoods — the smaller-scale, more informal social links that make life more secure and less threatening for families. It observes that the four families in this chapter find some community support around them and they all believe that community spirit is vital for family survival. Four mothers are interviewed who have had terrible experiences — divorce, domestic violence, demolition, crime — that make them ask whether social conditions, council action, and cities themselves may combine to destroy a sense of community within neighbourhoods, thereby threatening the survival of families in cities. It observes that the London families seem to have a tougher time identifying with their community than their Northern counterparts, and one London family left the area during the course of the study.
This chapter draws together evidence from the families in the study that: a) disadvantaged neighbourhoods make family life difficult; b) in order to survive families build local community links; c) that families make cities more humane; and d) cities work better when they support family life. It notes that families generate much of the social capital on which society as a whole flourishes. It also explores the dynamics of urban neighbourhoods from the perspective of parents and poses questions concerning the impact of neighbourhood conditions on family life, the issue of unpopular areas to work for families with children, strengthening community ties, and forms of interventions to counter the uncontrollable pressure on families of extremely rapid change.
This chapter explores family life, which is the foundation of all social life and therefore of our ability to survive in communities and neighbourhoods. It observes that the four families in this chapter experience strong pressures from surrounding problems. It notes that each mother, in different ways, has her share of family troubles as well, and helping their children grow up happily is the major preoccupation of the mothers. It also shows how small a role most fathers play in directly caring for the children and family care, in the main, is a role most mothers accept unquestioningly. It observes that working mothers feel torn between their children’s need for their time and their need for more money. It notes that one of the London families moved away during the course of the study and a Northern mother desperately wanted to do the same.
This chapter describes families from a minority ethnic background that moved into these neighbourhoods and the barriers they faced in trying to integrate their families into the community. It notes that the four families in this chapter come from very different backgrounds — South America, the Middle East, East Africa, and India. It observes that all four mothers hanker after the more supportive, community-oriented environment they knew as children. It further observes that the biggest threat they encounter is not hostility from the existing community, but the instability and uncertainties of the neighbourhoods where they live.
This chapter describes the study of how families live in troubled city neighbourhoods in the North of England and East London. It notes that this book is based on yearly visits over seven years to 200 families in four highly disadvantaged city neighbourhoods in England, 100 in East London, and 100 in Northern- and outer-city areas. It notes that these families are struggling with much harsher neighbourhood conditions than most people can imagine and this directly affects the families’ ability to cope. It further notes that twenty-four families from four low-income, unpopular neighbourhoods, six from each area, explain over time, from the inside, how neighbourhoods in and of themselves directly affect family survival. It explains that the book is organised around six main themes reflecting layers of local family life that emerged from difficult families’s stories — the neighbourhood, the community, the family, parenting, ‘incomers’, and civic intervention.
This chapter looks at neighbourhoods as the basic building blocks of all cities and towns. It observes that there are many serious problems and a general atmosphere of decay and decline, but there are also many promising changes and historic assets. It notes that the two Northern families are very committed to their areas, one as a ‘gentrifier’, who chooses to live in a diverse inner-city area, the other as a long-standing ‘born n bred’ old-guard resident. It observes that the London families cope with a much tougher environment, torn between strong local ties and the inescapable pressures to get out. It further observes that the neighbourhoods are difficult places for families, but the families find many things to defend, many positive assets they like.
This chapter looks at the active role parents play in teaching their children to reach out from the family towards the wider world in order to survive. It notes that this is the essence of all parental responsibility. It observes that in these neighbourhoods, parenting responds to a fear of surrounding dangers that constrains the essential maturing and distancing process of growing up. It notes that parents invest heavily in protecting their children from terrifying threats and actual dangers. It observes that the parenting experience combines all the problems of neighbourhoods, communities, and families in one intense activity — bringing up children in troubled areas. It further observes that the risk of their own children getting involved directly, and being influenced indirectly by happenings around them, is both real and undermining to parents.
The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) recognised the centrality of area conditions in holding back families and particularly children and young people from opportunities; it advocated a broad set of targets to reduce deprivation within disadvantaged areas and most importantly it recognised the complexities and interlocking problems of the worst areas.
As the range of area initiatives multiplied and hit the ground, there were complaints from local authorities and within Whitehall that ‘initiativitis’ had got out of control, which has led to a scaling back in area-specific programmes. This makes it crucial for us to understand what is really happening within areas, whether programmes and interventions really matter and whether mothers and their children – arguably the most vulnerable to any failures – benefit or not. This is the focus of our chapter.
The chapter begins by examining two areas of government action targeted at the population at large, but with potentially greater impact in the most disadvantaged areas where the problems are most severe (see also Chapter Six of this volume): employment and education (see also Chapters Two and Three of this volume). We then look at three initiatives that are targeted at deprived areas, although sometimes they can also apply more generally: New Deal for Communities and Sure Start (see also Chapter Seven); community policing and neighbourhood wardens; and community participation and empowerment (see also Chapter Five). There are many problems we have not discussed, such as social exclusion as a process in and of itself. We chose areas of government action with directly visible outcomes to see whether the families recognised and valued these interventions.
The UK’s concern about levels of poverty and social exclusion in recent years is not unique. The Lisbon Summit of the European Council (23-24 March 2000) placed poverty and social exclusion at centre stage for EU countries, asking member states to take steps to “make a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty” (Lisbon Summit Conclusions, para 32). Countries have had to publish National Action Plans for Social Inclusion and a set of target indicators are now published: for the first time, Europe has a scorecard for poverty, inequality and exclusion alongside those for inflation and interest rates.
Prior to this, several member states had already begun to increase the priority given to tackling deprivation. In many cases this was triggered by the election of a left-of-centre government: by 1999, 11 of the 15 EU countries had such a government in power, all of them elected after 19931. For instance, the Netherlands has had an anti-poverty policy since 1996, which has included active labour market policies alongside measures to raise the incomes of the poorest. In Ireland, the National Anti-Poverty Stategy (NAPS) was adopted in 1997, leading to targets for persistent poverty and unemployment, and the introduction of the practice of ‘poverty-proofing’ all government policy from 1998. In France, a ‘law against exclusion’ was passed in 1998, followed by a series of initiatives including the 1999 Law on Universal Health Insurance Coverage, while Portugal introduced a guaranteed minimum income for the first time in 1996. The Social-Democrat/Liberal coalition elected in Belgium in 1999 was an important force behind the establishment of common European social indicators, having made this a major priority for the Belgian presidency of the EU in 2001.