SIX Social exclusion exclusion and inclusion are universal features of human interaction, from global migration patterns to playground cliques. Divides are often given concrete form, for example the security gates that bar non-residents from elite housing developments, or the membership criteria that preserve the integrity of social clubs. These divisions are imposed formally, but often they arise from more subtle judgements about appearance and creed. The experience of being excluded can also be positive, although usually it entails a sense of losing out
Many policy and practice initiatives that aim to prevent social exclusion focus on children and young people. This book seeks to consider new approaches to understanding the complexities of prevention, and how these new understandings can inform policy and practice. The authors use evidence from the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund to illustrate and explore the experiences of children and families who are most marginalised. They consider the historical context of approaches to child welfare, and present a new framework for understanding and developing preventative polices and practice within the context of social exclusion.
Preventative initiatives such as the Children’s Fund have supported large-scale complex evaluations that have generated rich and important data about strategies for addressing social exclusion and what they can achieve. The findings of this book have direct relevance for all those engaged in developing preventative policy and practice and will therefore be of interest to policy makers, practitioners and students of child welfare and social policy more broadly, in providing a timely discussion of key debates in designing, delivering and commissioning preventative services.
Childhood poverty has moved from the periphery to the centre of the policy agenda following New Labour’s pledge to end it within twenty years. However, whether the needs and concerns of poor children themselves are being addressed is open to question.
The findings raise critical issues for both policy and practice - in particular the finding that children are at great risk of experiencing exclusion within school. School has been a major target in the drive towards reducing child poverty. However, the policy focus has been mainly about literacy standards and exclusion from school. This book shows that poor children are suffering from insufficient access to the economic and material resources necessary for adequate social participation and academic parity.
Childhood poverty and social exclusion will be an invaluable teaching aid across a range of academic courses, including social policy, sociology, social work and childhood studies. All those who are interested in developing a more inclusive social and policy framework for understanding childhood issues from a child-centred perspective, including child welfare practitioners and policy makers, will want to read this book.
Studies in poverty, inequality and social exclusion series
Series Editor: David Gordon, Director, Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research.
Poverty, inequality and social exclusion remain the most fundamental problems that humanity faces in the 21st century. This exciting series, published in association with the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, aims to make cutting-edge poverty related research more widely available.
For other titles in this series, please follow the series link from the main catalogue page.
39 Transport and social exclusion THREE Transport and social exclusion Karen Lucas This chapter presents a summary of recent developments in transport and social policy in England under the social exclusion policy agenda. These have emerged largely in response to increasing government recognition of the issues raised in the preceding chapters of this volume and the growing acceptance of both social and transport policy makers within central government that a ‘social welfare approach’ to transport decision making and policy delivery is needed in the UK. Similar
1 ONE social exclusion and refugees introduction Refugees flee persecution to avoid death or torture and represent a small proportion of the total number of migrants in the world. Most flee into neighbouring countries where they may live in makeshift camps for several decades at a time, rarely commanding the attention of the international media. Alternatively, some attempt often arduous journeys in search of asylum in traditional resettlement recipient countries of North America, Europe and Australia. Proportionately, the number of refugees reaching these
17 Globalisation and social exclusion TWO Globalisation and social exclusion The processes that have expanded the scale of global capitalism have occurred in varying degrees across the globe and increased the generation of wealth, while polarising its distribution both within as well as between countries (Townsend, 1993). These processes, it has been claimed, have eroded the capacity of nation states to act independently of the global market and challenged the assumptions and principles on which the post-war state rests. In political, business and many academic
John Welshman’s new book fills a major gap in social policy: the history of debates over ‘transmitted deprivation’, and their relationship with current initiatives on social exclusion.
The book explores the content and background to Sir Keith Joseph’s famous ‘cycle of deprivation’ speech in 1972, examining his own personality and family background, his concern with ‘problem families’, and the wider policy context of the early 1970s. Tracing the direction taken by the DHSS-SSRC Research Programme on Transmitted Deprivation, it seeks to understand why the Programme was set up, and why it took the direction it did. With this background, the book explores New Labour’s approach to child poverty, initiatives such as Sure Start, the influence of research on inter-generational continuities, and its new stance on social exclusion. The author argues that, while earlier writers have acknowledged the intellectual debt that New Labour owes to Joseph, and noted similarities between current policy approaches to child poverty and earlier debates, the Government’s most recent attempts to tackle social exclusion mean that these continuities are now more striking than ever before.
Making extensive use of archival sources, private papers, contemporary published documents, and oral interviews with retired civil servants and social scientists, “Policy, Poverty and Parenting" is the only book-length treatment of this important but neglected strand of the history of social policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers working on contemporary history, social policy, political science, public policy, sociology, and public health.
255 EIGHTEEN Brain injury and social exclusion Michael Oddy, Sara da Silva Ramos and Deborah Fortescue Social disadvantage and brain injury There is growing evidence that those in socially peripheral and disadvantaged groups are more likely to have suffered an acquired brain injury (ABI), particularly a traumatic brain injury (TBI). What is less clear is whether this association is due to common risk factors for social exclusion and for brain injury, or whether each increases the risk of the other. Of course, the likely answer is that these factors are
127 FIVE Social exclusion Defining social exclusion At the beginning of the millennium social exclusion was described as ‘the single dominant issue on the current political agenda in contemporary Europe’ (Ratcliffe, 2000, p 169). According to the European Commission (a source of much activity on the subject) in their 1992 Communication ‘Towards a Europe of solidarity’ (COM (92) 542), social exclusion results from: ‘mechanisms whereby individuals and groups are excluded from taking part in the social exchanges, from the component practices and rights of
