Public: Solace: September 09 | Public

Contemporary social evils

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:43:16 GMT

Joseph Rowntree (1836–1925) was a businessman and philanthropist who, with his son, developed the Rowntree confectionery company from its modest beginnings as a cocoa works in York. One hundred years ago, Joseph Rowntree endowed the three trusts that bear his name to combat the social evils of his time and to look at the root causes of social problems, rather than treating their symptoms.

One hundred years on, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) went out to the general public and the 'unheard voices' in our society to find out what they believed were the social evils posing the greatest threat to British society in the 21st century.

"Thinkers" of our day were then commissioned to write indepth responses to the main issues raised in the consultation, and a series of public lectures were held in different parts of the UK in autumn 2008.

Challenging political discourse

What the JRF's social evils project shows clearly is that there is a real willingness in the UK to engage with the big serious questions of our time. Respondents identified the social evils that we face, but they also identified the vibrant, optimistic and innovative response possible through a new, more engaged and far more challenging political discourse.

The entire project ran from July 2007 to July 2009 when the book, Contemporary Social Evils, was published. The full responses to the consultation, and essays, can be seen online.

We are publishing this pamphlet to add to this debate and bring it to people who can use the ideas to make a difference.
Each of the contributors in our pamphlet was asked to respond to a specific issue identified by the consultation, in relation to their own area of knowledge and expertise.

David Halpern (Institute for Government) begins our pamphlet by looking into the prime minister's red box to identify current and growing social evils. There are four kinds of 'evils' in the box: public concerns; exogenous evils (for example global warming); 'political' projects (like reducing child poverty) and administrative concerns' (for example the UK economy, accountability gaps). He discusses how these social evils can be prioritised.

John Shipley (Newcastle City Council) discusses the effects of fear and excessive surveillance. Stuart Etherington (NCVO), explains why he believes that "a thriving civil society is an essential precondition for confronting today's social evils".

The JRF project heard a lot about the family – family 'breakdown' and 'collapse' – but Mary MacLeod of the Family and Parenting Institute explains why she believes that the family is a very resilient institution and why it is "something to rely on as we face the consequences of this recession".

The decline of the community

Steve Houghton of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council talks about worklessness; and Rob Whiteman of LB Barking & Dagenham discusses the impact, and the reality, of the decline of the community. Stephen Greenhalgh (LB Hammersmith & Fulham) explains why he believes that we should be providing social housing rather than last resort, welfare housing.

Jo Farrar of Bridgend County Borough Council looks at the "problem'" of young people – are they menacing "hoodies" or victims? She says that we need to stop categorizing them; instead, we should be supporting them as "individuals who have great capacity to help others and a real desire to make a difference".

Irene Lucas (South Tyneside Council) urges us to focus on building social capital to help strengthen local democracy, giving it a real mandate to deliver change.

Paul Kelly from ASDA calls for businesses to take more responsibility and find solutions to the challenges that society faces, and Fiona Ellis (who ran the Northern Rock Foundation) believes that charities collectively "can fight social evils by speaking truth to power".

Paul Corrigan follows up on Rowntree's work on the health of the public comparing the situation 100 years ago with today.

Martin Narey and Anne Pinney of Barnardo's examine the crisis we are facing in youth unemployment (the NEETs), particularly the thousands of 16 and 17 year olds who have left education and are trapped in unemployment.

Finally, David Clark (SOLACE) uses the example of the recent scandal of MPs' expenses to show how great the distance is in this country between the governor and the governed: "Allowing such distance to be established', he explains, 'may well be a social evil in itself, and it is certainly a fertile ground for other evils to develop'.

We hope this pamphlet will generate useful debate and that you will refer others to it: it is available to download from the web at: http://www.solace.org.uk/sfi.asp

We are extremely grateful to our contributors and to Jo Benfield from SOLACE for all her hard work on this pamphlet.

Sir Michael Bichard is editor-in-chief of SFI.

Julia Unwin CBE is Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She is a member of the Ethics Committee at the University of York and a governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Social evils: the new political discourse

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:43:11 GMT

An inquiry into contemporary social evil

When the Joseph Rowntree Foundation launched its inquiry into the nature of 21st-century social evil in 2007, the current financial crisis was a distant cloud on an otherwise tranquil seeming horizon. While astute readers of the financial weather predicted trouble ahead, for most the previous decade of stability and growth, combined with apparently very real increases in wealth for the many, created an environment in which ease and comfort seemed the dominant forecast.

The political debate was about how to divide the rewards of wealth, not whether they would still exist. The growth in public expenditure, financed by the growing wealth of the majority, predicated on historically low levels of taxation, seduced many into believing that financial storms were a thing of the past. The inquiry itself gathered responses from a wide range of people, including focus groups for voices which are usually unheard, and resulted in the publication of a book, pulling together the threads of this discussion, in June 2009.

Different voices, shared message

How could it be that at a time of great wealth, during a period of unparalleled comfort and ease, that some people were able to express discomfort and unease? Was it just a form of social pessimism? Or did the respondents actually identify something more disturbing, more rotten than was generally identified?

Two years later the paradox seems much easier to understand. The previous period of rapid growth created anxiety and unhappiness precisely because, as it is now so very clear, the former period was both unsustainable and unjust. Unsustainable because it quite literally could not be sustained. Long before toxic debt, fat cats and newly-fashionable austerity became the clichés of our time, the respondents to this piece of work were drawing attention to the greed, the individualism, and the collapse of community that they witnessed. Was this just nostalgia, and a perennial British discontent, or was it a more deep-seated recognition that the previous weather was, quite possibly, too good to last? Was it perhaps recognition that the price paid for this unsustainable accumulation of wealth was being paid by those least capable of paying it, and the costs were felt by every abandoned community, every neglected child, every lonely pensioner?

The previous boom was unjust because the rewards were distributed in a way that impoverished many, and benefited only a few. The unequal distribution of rewards had coarsened public life, left individuals feeling powerless and made communities into places of conflict, uncertainty and contested aspiration.

As we move through a damaging recession, the voices of those who responded to the Foundation's call for views about the nature of modern social evils seem to be the forecasters among us. Derided as perpetually bemoaning the loss of a previous Arcadia, they now seem both more perceptive and more insightful. In their regrets about the nature of community, the privileging of the individual and the primacy of greed, they seem to have prefigured a national conversation of real resonance.

The post recession world

What will the post recession world look like? The social evils debate started by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that there is not simply an appetite for a debate about it, there are also some clear parameters for those who wish to engage with it. This debate has unearthed a longing for serious engagement with politics and public policy. It has revealed an earnest desire to grapple with the big underlying questions, and a palpable sense that in a time which seems to be dominated by celebrity culture and superficial response, there is actually a willingness to engage with the big serious questions of our time.

This changing political discourse can be witnessed at community level.
Across the country as people wrestle with the challenges brought by the need to mitigate climate change, they are forming groups to reduce consumption, share costs and contribute to a more sustainable community. As they face the realities of demographic change, with more people in need of care and support within their communities they are pooling efforts, developing neighbourliness and working in different ways to offer support. From allotment societies to arts centres, conservation groups to internet cafes, housing co-operatives to car clubs, civil society is showing itself to be adaptive and resilient. It is demonstrating that it is a product of a more serious, more engaged political discourse that is willing and able to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.

Contemporary social evils were defined by the respondents as a decline in values, and over dominant affluence and greed. In identifying evils in this way, they also pointed, very clearly, to the possibility of a new discourse that celebrates the common good, strengthens shared responsibility and values the needs of the many more than the temporary desires of the few.

Julia Unwin CBE is Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She is a member of the Ethics Committee at the University of York and a governor of the Pensions Policy Institute.

Social evils: the PM's box

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:42:25 GMT

The contents of a prime minister's red box gives a good overview of current and growing social evils – or 'challenges' as officials prefer to call them –jostling for attention. In broad terms, four kinds of 'evils' crowd the box, though they sometimes overlap.

First there are public concerns. These are the issues that dominate elections and that governments dare not ignore. In the 1970s and 80s, inflation, the unions, and unemployment, dominated. By the 1997 and 2001 elections, public concerns had shifted onto health and education, before being replaced by fear of other people by 2005 – crime, immigration and terrorism. Most recently, concerns about the economy have crowded out other public concerns, with the partial exception of concern about crime and anti-social behaviour.

Second, there are externally driven, or exogenous, 'evils'. Many of these are extremely serious and may threaten our very existence, yet are not necessarily great public concerns. Global warming is the obvious example. The Stern Report estimated that a failure to act would lead to more than 100 million people displaced by rising sea levels, with similar numbers of refugees from drought and famine, and an economic cost of roughly 20% of global GDP.

Yet the environment has rarely been mentioned by more than 10% of the British public as a concern in standard surveys, and in pan-European surveys – even pre-credit crunch – the environment does not make it into the top three concerns of any nation. Many lifestyle-related issues can also be thought of as exogenously-driven 'evils', such as drug abuse, obesity, or even the aging population (though it hardly feels right to call the latter an evil). All are substantially driven by economic growth.

'Political' or 'moral' projects

Third, there are what we might call 'political' or 'moral' projects – concerns or evils that a government or party has set itself to address, more or less regardless of public opinion. For example, the Labour government has had a fairly sustained drive to reduce child poverty, even if it has failed to reach its own targets. This hasn't been driven by public concerns or external threats, but more by a political and moral project that Joseph Rowntree would have recognised.

Finally, there are 'administrative concerns'. While these may lack the drama of threats such as global warming or terrorism, they can have big impacts on costs, effectiveness and the quality of life – and the current hole in public sector finances may raise their profile further. Such issues include the low productivity of the UK economy, quality and efficiency concerns around the public sector, and accountability gaps.

How do we compare and prioritise such very different challenges? One way is to let the numbers do the talking. A failure to act on global warming, using Stern's figures, suggests a cost of more than £15 trillion a year in today's terms, albeit discounted into the future. Civil wars, in comparison, are estimated to cost the world around £150 billion a year, with two new wars starting every year – costs we share in lost trade, aid and the offering of asylum.

Health and welfare costs

In domestic policy, costs can be apportioned more directly to UK taxpayers, and are smaller but perhaps more salient. The health and welfare costs of obesity in the UK are put at around £10 billion and rising. The costs of 'NEETs' (young people not in education, employment or training) are similar. On child poverty, it's £ billion a year just to stay still and an estimated £32 billion extra a year to meet the government's target. Natural disasters might be said not to count as 'social evils', but many of the costs have a human hand within them. The estimated £2.5 billion of the cost of the 2007 floods owed much to our tendency to build on natural drainage.

Whatever the absolute costs of a problem, policy focus needs to be on the cost effectiveness of the approaches to addressing it. A problem without the prospect of a solution is just a fact of life. It is rational to focus our marginal resources on where they will have most impact, and this will not always be the biggest problem in terms of overall costs. Hence while from an ethical point of view one might decide that Job Centres should spend just as much effort on everyone, from a practical point of view it makes a lot of sense to segment the population and focus on those for whom extra help will make most difference – with less help going to those who would soon get a job anyway or those who are so far from the labour market that huge effort will be required to get them into a job.

Ultimately, judgements over which social evil to prioritise rest not just on technical or financial assessments, but on democratic and public deliberation. Government, both national and local, is where these choices collide. In this sense, weaknesses that afflict government and democracy are a particularly grave concern. Most wouldn't call the deficiencies of government a social evil, but perhaps they should.

As is often noted, most of the great challenges that face us – from obesity to climate change – do not fit within the neat box of a post-war Whitehall department. Cross-national evidence suggests that UK government is not just unusually centralised to Whitehall, but also unusually silo-based within it. Addressing this problem should be high on the list of any social reformer wishing to take on our great social challenges.

Solutions may include having more ministers and local commissioners with cross-cutting objectives and budgets to match; regulatory and performance management systems that cut across silos (such as the new common area assessments for local areas or revised capability reviews for government departments); and building services around citizens and families.

Another concern lies in the distribution of power itself. It is said that 'liberty is power cut into small pieces', but the pieces are by no means evenly distributed in the Britain of today, and on some measures have become even less so. While levels of voting have fallen modestly, levels of alternative political engagement – such as lobbying of MPs, going on protests, or writing to a local newspaper – have risen dramatically.

These activities are strongly skewed to the more affluent and more educated. At the same time, there has been an increase to around one in five of Britons who have absolutely no engagement in political life at all. This minority is dominated by the least affluent and least educated. This subtle and growing social skew raises serious questions about the representativeness of our institutions, and makes the case for democratic innovations that reach far beyond conventional government 'consultation'.

Web of shared assumptions

Yet the world is not only full of social evils, even if our political debate is dominated by them. Societies and economies can only function because of a web of shared assumptions, institutions and moral habits. These provide a rich soil for solutions to our challenges as well as a place for social evils to grow. To take just one example, estimates of the value of the informal economy of caring (for our children, our elderly and our friends) exceeds that of total GDP. If we can nurture and encourage this economy of regard even a little, the gains would be huge. Any fair account of the landscape of social evils – even the PM's box – needs to encompass an account of our social goods too.

David Halpern is Director of Research, – Institute for Government, London. He previously worked as Chief Analyst in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (2001-2007).

This piece draws on the recent edited volume Options for a New Britain (2009) and his book The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2009). See www.instituteforgovernment.org for further details around the discussion on government.

Fear is the biggest threat

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:42:18 GMT

At a city council by-election earlier this year, I knocked on the door of a declared Liberal Democrat supporter to be met with a torrent of abuse. He had changed his mind. He said the council was guilty of 'letting in immigrants who take our jobs'. Behind the rant, I detected fear: fear of the possible loss of job and home because of the recession. I see fear as the greatest threat to a liberal society because it feeds intolerance in the search for easy solutions.

Fear of crime

Fear of crime remains stubbornly high at a time when crime has been falling. Perception is all. Young people may be doing nothing wrong when congregating together, but in large numbers they can seem intimidating. For too many people, there is an unjustified perception that it is unsafe to go out in the evening and even more unsafe to venture into the city centre. Reducing that fear of crime is vital if we are to enhance liberal values.
Increasing the number of ASBOs or the number of criminal offences or the number of prison places will not make Britain safer. The unintended consequence of such policies can be to increase crime. Some individuals see an ASBO as an achievement. Crime inevitably rises as more categories of offences reach the statute book. And prison numbers rise with insufficient attention paid to the long-term consequences for an individual's rehabilitation.

Mitigating the impact of the recession

Unemployment could hit four million within the next three years. This is dangerous. Leaders in local government must urgently identify new jobs in areas of sustainable growth – in our case, for example, wind turbine manufacture and the commercialisation of scientific and medical research.
As a council, we are doing all we can to mitigate the impact of the recession – increased capital investment through more borrowing, more apprenticeships, increased spending on infrastructure and more help for small businesses. We must try to procure more locally by dividing up contracts to enable more local companies to tender.

Inequality increases public spending

It is a major worry that, after 60 years of the welfare state, Britain is now more unequal than at any time since modern records began 50 years ago. Unequal societies are more dysfunctional – and cost more in terms of public spending – than societies which are more equal. Absolute levels of wealth in a country are secondary. If we want a more tolerant, liberal society, we have to spread wealth more fairly. Greater equality would improve public health and reduce crime. We would have less obesity, lower alcohol consumption and less crime. Prevention is better and cheaper in the long term, even if it is more expensive in the short term.

The need for a freedom bill

A freedom bill is needed to repeal the repressive legislation of successive governments over the past 20 years. A bill has been drafted by the Liberal Democrats dealing with specific challenges to traditional liberties. They include the scrapping of ID cards, the abolition of control orders, the restoration of rights to public assembly, the abolition of the criminalisation of trespass, the restoration of the right to silence when accused in court, restrictions on the use of surveillance powers to serious crimes, the removal of innocent people from the national DNA database, and the better regulation of closed-circuit television (CCTV).

We should not be confiscating the cameras of tourists in the name of 'fighting terrorism', nor should reasonable democratic protest be seen as a form of terrorism. We must not blur the distinction between civil and criminal law, nor should we put the police in the position of making decisions that determine the right to protest in advance.

However, we need to maintain a sense of perspective. CCTV use is popular and reduces the fear of crime. We need to be clear whose liberty we are protecting. Is it the person who is simply walking down the street, or is it the person who will walk down the street if CCTV is in operation? I think it is the latter. In Newcastle, if I walked out of the civic centre and through the city centre and shops for an hour I would be recorded 100 times on CCTV. Reducing its use by 90% would still leave ten such recordings. The majority of people regard CCTV as a positive benefit in making our streets safer. They see it as the 'bobby on the beat'.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)

The government recently launched a consultation on councils' use of surveillance powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. This is welcome because it will help us to define powers and responsibilities better.

For example, my council's night-time noise complaints' hotline and our efforts to stop fly-tipping are very well regarded. People should not be free to stop their neighbours sleeping night after night, nor should people be free to tip rubbish in public places. So, when we collect evidence, people see a local council doing its job.

There has been understandable criticism of some councils using surveillance to prosecute minor offences, such as dog fouling, and some politicians, particularly in the House of Lords, have called for authorisation to be reserved to magistrates in relation to local authority applications. I do not believe that magistrates should make those decisions. In Newcastle, officers authorised to approve surveillance are very limited in number, are at a senior level and are fully aware of the limitations and constraints of those powers.

The impact of technology

As technology advances we will continue to have discussions on whether some school governing bodies are right to introduce biometrics into schools; I have a natural distaste for introducing children to fingerprinting. I distrust large databases and question whether we are right to have such all-embracing computer systems containing so much private data, in particular the children's database, open to so many people.
New technology should be embraced where it protects individual rights. It should be very carefully examined where the benefit to the individual is unproven.

John Shipley is Leader of Newcastle City Council. He represents Parklands Ward and was first elected as a councillor in May 1975. He is a member of the Northern Way Steering Group and the Northern Way Transport Compact. He was appointed a board member of One North East in December 2005 and is a board member of both the NewcastleGateshead City Development Company and Newcastle Science City Company Ltd. He represents the City Council on a number of other outside bodies including the Theatre Royal Trust. He chairs the Newcastle Partnership (LSP). He worked for over 30 years with The Open University.

Building the good society

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:42:13 GMT

Recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation sought people's views about life in the 21st century and asked them to identify which 'social evils' pose the greatest threat (see www.jrf.org.uk/socialevils). The resulting findings paint a picture of a society ill at ease with itself and, arguably, one that is ill-prepared to face the challenges ahead.

But it also shows that people would like the world to be a better place. A thriving civil society helps to create that better place. It can provide a catalyst for collective action, independently of the state or the market; generate and mobilise social capital, replacing self-interest with solidarity; and it can strengthen democracy by bringing together different voices and interests.

As many of the contributors to this debate have argued, these social evils arise in large part from a retreat into individualism and 'the absence of society' (Zygmunt Bauman in Contemporary Social Evils, JRF/Policy Press, 2009). We now live in a world where private consumption and lifestyle choices have become the main vehicle for personal expression and connectedness to others. A world of greater social and economic diversity (and inequality), as well as geographical mobility, where individuals have cross-cutting identities and allegiances. This makes it more difficult to call on a single notion of the common interest, but perhaps more important that we find ways of creating and supporting new forms of collective agency and solidarity.

Economic crisis

The wisdom of the late 20th century was that a free market will deliver economic stability and a strong society; that the self-interest of individuals will maximise the common good. The economic crisis has profoundly challenged that view, while the JRF study has highlighted its social costs and consequences. Therefore we need a new vision for this century. As Neal Lawson rightly points out, neither the state nor the market can provide the solutions we need; solidarity and agency 'is only to be found by acting in concert and co-operation with others' (Neal Lawson in Contemporary Social Evils, JRF/Policy Press, 2009). If we are to combat contemporary social evils and meet the challenges ahead, we need to rebalance the relationship between the state, the market and civil society and increase the space for independent voluntary action.

Building solidarity

Civil society is shaped by people themselves; by their needs, concerns, interests and passions; their desire to make a positive difference to their lives and the lives of others. That is what makes it distinctive. Some may be motivated by their sense of social justice or fair play, others may simply be looking for fun and friendship. But whether it is joining a trade union or a community choir, volunteering for a local hospice or campaigning against global poverty, civil society associations bring people together and help to strengthen community life. In this way they can help to overcome people's sense of isolation, promote solidarity and mutual support, and create opportunities to develop collective solutions to shared problems.

London Citizens, for example, works with communities at the grassroots to help them identify issues that will make a real difference to their lives, such as being paid a living wage, and campaign for change. And because it represents a wide range of organisations it also plays a key role in building connections within and between communities. Action at the local level such as this makes communities stronger, more cohesive and more resilient.

Transforming people's lives

Civil society organisations also help to build a fairer society through the practical support they provide. This can be seen, for example, in the work of credit unions, helping the poorest communities in the UK to raise income and build up assets, thereby gaining a degree of security and self-respect. Or organisations such as Kids Company, reaching out to young people, making them feel safe, turning their lives around.

Reconnecting people and politics

As campaigners and advocates, civil society organisations seek to influence public and political opinion, generate support for their cause, and achieve real changes that will make a positive difference to the communities they work with, whether at home or abroad. Campaigning across a broad spectrum of issues, from environmentalism to disability rights, they have often energised and provoked public debate in a way that has sometimes left traditional politics in their slipstream.

The continued public support for campaigning organisations suggests that people are willing to collectively engage in, and mobilise around issues of concern, if not in formal political processes. By inspiring people to get involved in debates about social problems and solutions, and to consider what the good society might look like, these organisations strengthen democracy. Only by harnessing the idealism, passion and commitment to collective action that is at the heart of voluntary action can we begin to reconnect people and politics.

Conclusion

Civil society cannot achieve the change that is required on its own. We also need healthy democratic institutions, such as a local council with the legitimacy to take decisions in the wider public interest and to safeguard our rights and freedoms. And we need a functioning market system to generate economic wealth, to create jobs and to generate the surpluses needed to meet human needs and achieve social goals. However, a strong and vibrant civil society is necessary to strengthen solidarity, foster social values such as equality, fairness and respect for others, and create space for debate about how the world is and how it should be. In other words, a thriving civil society is an essential precondition for confronting today's social evils and thinking about the kind of world we want to live in.

Stuart Etherington was appointed Chief Executive of NCVO in 1994. Previously he was Chief Executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People. He is also Pro-Chancellor of Greenwich University, Chair of Guidestar UK, and a council member of the Institute of Employment Studies. He has been a trustee of Business in the Community, chair of the BBC Appeals Advisory Committee, and a member of the community and social affairs committee of Barclays Bank.

Families and their discontents

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:42:07 GMT

In the relentless public conversation about what is wrong with how we live now, the family is high on the list of culprits. So it was inevitable that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's project to define present-day social evils should hear about the family. But, as we confront the social pessimism about the family, it is worth remembering how very much reality is at the mercy of the stories we tell ourselves about the way things are.

Unhappy families?

Comment on the family is irredeemably negative; the tone apocalyptic, with words like 'breakdown' and 'collapse' in constant use. Regular rants abound about selfish mothers who 'want it all', feral children making people's lives a misery, and fathers either denied their rights by malevolent mothers or 'deadbeat' fathers who take no responsibility – always exaggeration.

'The UK is the worst place in the world to bring up children', said a charity spokesperson on the Today programme recently: not quite what she would have meant to say, but revealing of how we think. Meanwhile, most UK children and families do well, living in circumstances the envy of much of the world, with Britain a destination of choice for those fleeing poverty and oppression.

Historians of the family point to regular outbreaks of anxiety such as this at moments of transition: when change is rapid or when a serious social problem is exposed. Unsurprising, then, that the turbulence of globalisation and the technological revolution produce anxiety; and 24/7 media makes its transfer virally swift – a feature of modernity that puts reality further adrift from experience.

In FPI's recent YouGov survey, we asked over 3,000 adults about their views on family and their experiences of family life. Just over half (54%) signed up to the proposition that family life is in crisis. But the picture portrayed of their own family was quite different and overwhelmingly positive: families ate together, played together and visited each other; only 5% were unhappy with family life. This perception gap is repeated again and again across surveys. If there is no crisis, we are doing our best to invent one.

Families in flux?

So is family life going to the dogs or is it much the same on the inside, though the outside looks somewhat different? Undoubtedly families are changing, but it is difficult to establish exactly what these changes mean for families and family life.

We have fewer marriages and more divorce, separation, cohabitation, and childbirth outside marriage; with a pattern of partnering and parenting similar to Nordic countries; children stay at home longer; marriage and child-bearing happen on average later; families now run to four and five generations; and, happily, more people live longer. Economic circumstances, differing attitudes to sexual morality, and new approaches to infertility, all stretch our definition of family from the recently dominant, heterosexual nuclear family form.
The context to family life has also changed.

Alongside mass relative poverty in the context of 'in your face' affluence, we have the growth of two-earner households, with the middle-classes becoming wage slaves too because of rising living costs, university fees, elder care, and extended youth dependency. Consumption is enjoyed by more, encouraged by ubiquitous marketing and a culture of acquisition, but also the desire for reasonable, modest pleasures, like nice clothes, holidays or mobile 'phones.

Family time is lived differently. Time is seen more and more as a commodity, often associated with leisure; the phrase 'time poor' in modern parlance calls up the memory of hours of domestic labour, before appliances transformed the home, and 10-hour days and six-day weeks. 'Go out and play!' is less of an option for parents, so that playing with and occupying children becomes a parenting task.

Family life is both more privatised, as adults retreat from collective responsibility for children and young people and families live more indoors, and yet more open to influence from the presence of the outside in families: TV, mobiles, the internet conveying cultural and marketing messages that affect how we live, our values and aspirations.

Family pressure points

Women, particularly mothers, are experiencing strain managing work and care. Happily, men are now more involved in caring and sharing the domestic load, but women still undertake the lion's share of caring for children, the disabled, and elderly parents.

Poverty and disadvantage continue to have the biggest negative effect on children's futures. The relationship between poverty and family dysfunction is complicated; effects go both ways: it is harder to care on an empty stomach; and poverty in caring creates poverty of aspiration, health and choice, and the behaviours of despair.

There are far too many families, not all poor, with the most severe and destructive problems: domestic violence, mental health problems, alcohol and drug misuse. While it is comforting that the majority of children and young people are doing well, some important children and families are not; and they have a disproportionate effect on others; so we need to get better at caring for them.

Flexible families

All political parties believe that the relationships we have with each other at home are not only private but have a profound public impact, that families not only raise children but build neighbourliness and the kinds of communities that we want to live. It is the quality of family relationships that makes the difference. And when challenged to find solutions, the public are very uncertain about what might be efficacious that does not impinge badly on the majority or on children. If we are in the middle of a revolution in families perhaps it is more in the collective mind than the daily bread of family life; important, then, not to panic into policy.

While it is difficult to discover 'truth' from contested narratives about modernity, and there is strain and difficulty within 21st-century families, these strains are not any more virulent than past challenges, and they are accompanied by freedoms from some past miseries and a multitude of new, rich opportunities.

Families care for each other still. The massive interest in genealogy shows how our families and family history inhabits us; families that include with the living, the dead, the people families have lost, and the 'might have been', the imagined. The definition of family stretches and shrinks to accommodate changing times. But families remain hugely meaningful and important to us in defining who we are, setting us on a life course and accompanying us through, for better or worse. Thankfully, the family is a very resilient institution; something to rely on as we face the consequences of this recession.

For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
(Shakespeare, Hamlet.)

Mary MacLeod OBE is Chief Executive of the Family and Parenting Institute. She has worked for many years in children and families services as social worker, manager, academic, researcher, writer and policy analyst. She is non-executive director of Great Ormond Street Hospital and a trustee of the NCB and Cafcass.

Understanding worklessness

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:42:03 GMT

'Worklessness' – or long-term absence from employment for large numbers of people – is a relatively new phrase and historically a relatively new concept. It underpins much of the deprivation which exists in many of our communities. Its causes and context are different from place to place and often person to person. Solutions to the problem therefore require both an understanding of place and those affected by it.

For example, in parts of London and the south east of England (until recently at least) jobs were in abundance but large numbers of people were economically inactive. The reasons for this are varied – ill-health, low skills, language, ethnicity and lack of mobility are all contributing factors. Tackling the problem requires a holistic and personal approach by a range of service providers, often even before employment can be considered.

In other places, particularly the former industrial towns and cities of the Midlands and the north of England, the challenge is even greater. Not only do workless people face the problems I have just described, they face a far more competitive labour market in that job vacancies are at much lower levels. For example, in Working Neighbourhood Areas the unemployed to job vacancy rate is 9 to 1, compared to 5 to 1 elsewhere. This has led to worklessness becoming a way of life for both people and places and we are beginning to see some communities where second and third generations have not experienced employment.

This varied picture tells us three things:
* First, one-size-fits-all solutions driven from the centre of government have a limited impact – existing number of workless people have remained stubbornly high for some time.
* Second, solutions require a multi-agency/partnership approach.
* Third, solutions need to be localised, even personalised.

Traditional economic theories have been found wanting in this environment, particularly around the idea of a mobile labour force being prepared or able to move for work.

However, a new understanding is beginning to be developed based on an improved knowledge of places and the people who inhabit them. We need to build on this work and create a new policy framework around it. One which is transparent and accountable for government to ensure that taxpayers' money is used effectively, but also one which is devolved locally so that decisions and programmes reflect local context and personal needs more effectively.

A new framework

To begin with, we all need to work smarter. The current framework for helping both employers and the unemployed is too complex and lacks the data and information to be fully effective. Local councils should be conducting worklessness assignments as part of their new economic duty. Understanding who can, can't or won't work is essential to targeting the right actions and resources to the right people. It also means having a better analysis of local labour markets and how to help people into them. Such demand-and supply-side analyses also require good information-gathering and sharing cross agency – something absent historically in the system.

Building on this first step, local strategic partnerships and their councils should work closely with training providers, government and Job Centre Plus to produce work and skills plans. These would identify the resources, services and actions to be taken to tackle the problem and the outcomes to be achieved. These plans also should include funding steams, such as the Working Neighbourhoods Fund, mainstream council and partner funds as well as those of government itself. Wrap-around services, such as health, benefits, and community advice, can be as important as training and employment services in bringing people back towards employment. Such an approach would allow better performance management of the system and scrutiny and encourage co-commissioning of services between partners locally.

Finally, central government should allow pooling of resources locally by partners. Joint commissioning and locally-set targets and outcomes would allow for a more personalised approach and encourage local provision as well as regional and national action. However, the capacity to take such a step needs to be developed in many places and will take time.
Of course the framework that I have described may be better delivered cross council or the sub/city region. Labour markets are not restricted by political boundaries and multi-area agreements may be more appropriate.

Shaping services – procuring solutions

In describing this new devolved framework I have alluded to the fact that not only should services be geared towards individual communities but also towards individuals themselves, and in doing so the onus is for those services to be used to move towards or achieve employment for the recipients.

If we are to tackle the culture of worklessness in our most deprived communities, we need to replace it with a culture of work. That means that all the services we deploy need to have that end in mind and that may mean reshaping their delivery and the outcomes from them. That also means reshaping the benefits system to that end, we have too many places where work does not have the value it should. There is a job for central government and local government to encourage society to value all forms of work, not just that at the higher end of the market.

On a more practical level there are things which local government and the public sector can do more of without any major policy changes. Historically, many of the areas which are now suffering from long-term unemployment had large public sector industries such as coal and steel which not only employed people but trained them for the wider economy and they used their capacity to support local businesses.

While I would not advocate any unaffordable or permanent expansion of the public sector workforce, local councils and their partners can do more. There is capacity and opportunity to give training/apprenticeships and work experience to local people – particularly where the private sector is weak or small. There is also the ability to review the procurement of goods and services to look at supporting local businesses and placing local people into work with contractors. Local government procures over £20 billion in goods and services every year. European procurement rules are often cited as a block to such moves but in places like Liverpool, Wakefield and South Tyneside ways through this have been found, much to the benefit of those localities.

Re-thinking regeneration
Thus far I have focused on labour supply and how we can deploy resources to bring it more effectively into work. Sadly, despite working better and smarter, there are places which still have insufficient job opportunities to meet local need. This was the case after 10 years of sustained economic growth. The position of such economies has become even more difficult as a result of the recession. So what can we do here?

A recent report from the Policy Exchange Group identified this as a particular problem for former industrial towns in the north of England. Its preferred solution was for the unemployed in the north to move south to access more available job opportunities there. This suggestion failed to recognise the challenges faced by the long-term unemployed and the hindrances to their mobility, let alone the potential impact on an already overheated southern economy. Faced with underperforming economies and a relatively immobile labour force what are such places to do?

The government's new duty on local authorities to undertake economic assessments is a start. Just as we need to understand worklessness, we need to understand places as local economies, their real growth potential and their role in the wider sub-regional and regional worlds. This will require honesty. Experience in many places suggests that sustainable community strategies and economic development plans looked the same and failed to deliver. It is time for many places to review their strategies and look to what may be possible in the post recession world.

That is not to quell ambition, but to ensure it has real foundations. Investment in deprived areas in the late 1980s was replaced by investment in opportunity in the 1990s, with strategies to connect the hard to reach to areas of growth. Neither of these had much effect on the numbers of long-term unemployed.

Both approaches also suffered from short-termism – something which has undermined employment and skills support as well – this needs to be rectified. Longer term support for under achieving economies is essential if we are to see growth restored. However, spending on overambitious capital or inward investment projects may not be the way forward.

More attention needs to be given to people-focused interventions, creating home-grown enterprise and increasing mobility. Some economies may have to accept that they cannot be what they once were. Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have a crucial role here in creating an intelligence-based approach, as does local political leadership in identifying new and real futures for places and driving them forward. Central government and RDAs need to identify those places which face these problems and work closely with them over the long term. In Yorkshire, the RDA's Renaissance Towns Programme was a good example of both economic challenge and co-operation and something from which others can learn.

Conclusions – mainstream business

We all need to understand that worklessness is not simply an issue for central government. The range of services and interventions needed to place the hardest to reach into work are wide and numerous. This means that tackling worklessness is mainstream business for all partners, but particularly local authorities. In saying that, the implications for the centre of government are to allow devolution, decision-making and delivery to flourish at that local level. But that delivery – the services and activities being provided – has to have at its heart the notion of moving people closer to employment.

Steve Houghton CBE is Leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council. He has been a Member of the Council for 22 years and Leader for 12 years. He is also Chair of the National Worklessness Review; Chair of the Barnsley Local Strategic Partnership; Chair of SIGOMA; an Audit Commissioner; and a Regional Peer of the IDeA.

The decline of the community

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:58 GMT

Research shows that many citizens feel there has been a decline in what is often referred to as the 'community of place'. Communities of interest meanwhile – whether through social networking, faith, or single-issue politics – are now increasingly important to many people. Feeling connected to a place, or to a community of interest, of course has different levels of affiliation, from the deeply rooted to the casual exchange of information. People are now often passionate about their community of interest, but are seemingly often less passionate about the community of place than in decades gone by.

So how connected are you? Middle-class professionals with relative prosperity invariably feel well connected to communities of interest and can navigate the way decisions are made, but for many this is often more variable if asked how rooted they are in their geographic community.

Housing aspirations, employment changes and schooling considerations all mean that we are often likely to be moving around and 'adopting' local communities and places for fixed periods.

We may like 'the area' or 'the neighbourhood' on a basic level, based on an assessment of its pleasantness, the quality of the local shopping for occasional use between big supermarket shops, and the quality of transport connectivity to our various pursuits. And because our connectedness comes from work, social activities, old student friends, social networks including using new technology, hobbies and academic pursuits, we don't necessarily develop a sense of a tight-knit community of place because we don't need one to bind our connections.

Connectedness

Now take the settled resident of somewhere like Barking & Dagenham, who moved to or was born in the area many decades ago, and where connectedness was often associated with place: from living in the same 'banjo' (cul-de-sac); going to the same school; working in the same local factory; or socialising in the same club or pub. Working in factories like Ford could be very tedious, and so connection to the community of place was important to engender a sense of wellbeing not achieved at work even though conveniently local.

Beyond the deep sentiment of associating place with one's family growing up there, people also felt a sense of stewardship toward the area and its schools, churches, local employers and places to meet people in the street. Children grew up and many stayed, and as their families got bigger the council provided houses with gardens in the same neighbourhood. Residents can even tell you that a sense of place was associated with pride that a line including Alf Ramsay, Bobby Moore, Terry Venables, Trevor Brooking, Tony Adams and John Terry represented their country at football.

Many families moved to the Becontree estate, the largest council estate built in the world at that time, in the 1920s, 30s and 40s from slum clearance in the old East End and 60 years later still lived there with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren nearby. While they saw the old East End change demography in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and then saw cliff edge regeneration and gentrification with developments like Canary Wharf coming later in the 1980s, people saw their area stay the same. And while many children and their families moved out to Essex if they could afford it they retained strong links to the place where they grew up.

'Right to buy' changed the home ownership pattern among the white working-class in Barking & Dagenham; and the decline of Ford and other industry changed the route of apprenticeships, semi-skilled or unskilled roles into work. Now, there are new neighbours 'not from round here' which soon became 'it's not the same around here' and 'there's no sense of community' and by extension 'we've lost the sense of community values as a country'.

Expectation

In many parts of London over the decades people had no expectation that the council would provide houses, but in Barking & Dagenham the system operated for many, many years that families were 'moved up' the housing ladder. There are now 20,000 fewer houses in the public sector and residents feel angry that their children and grandchildren cannot move into houses as they themselves did as their families outgrew their council flats.

At the same time a community with statistically the lowest adult skills base in the country has not been able to always find work, even on the edge of a global economic city that boomed for 20 years, or afford to buy the former right to buy houses being purchased by young Londoners from other parts of the capital and/or buy-to-let landlords.

This sense of frustration cannot be assuaged by better public services alone. It goes deeper than this. And people simply want to trust and use their local school and local hospital, and so the politics of middle England on issues such as choice do not resonate or connect national politics to local issues. While the well-connected find it easy to look outwards, the rooted look inwards in their communities and find examples of unwanted change in an area with the fastest and wide-ranging demographic change in the country.

Traditional, often older, white working-class residents feel the area is not as good as it once was and are not optimistic about the future; and our newer and ethnically diverse communities, often younger, like the area and feel more optimistic about the future and their economic prospects. But both feel that people from different backgrounds do not always get along and so do not easily feel connected to an integrated community of place.

Discussion

Our major learning over recent years in Barking & Dagenham is that there is not a communications or marketing solution to creating a sense of community. Rather, we have found that positive discussion, myth-busting and a new narrative about change must come from within communities through sustained and embedded community development, events to bring people together, and visible examples of the community helping itself, for example young people clearing the gardens of the elderly and young and old together planting bulbs and taking pride in amenity areas. But the lack of housing, jobs and prospects remain material and dangerous to community cohesion until regeneration delivers medium-term benefits. As economic aspirations rise, so will connectivity to things other than place; but recreating and celebrating the community of place so that people look to the future and not the past is a vital stepping-stone along the way.

Rob Whiteman is Chief Executive of the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham and Chair of the London Chief Executives' London Committee (CELC). He is also a member of NESTA's public services Innovation Lab.

Ending the race to the bottom

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:54 GMT

There are moments in local politics when you feel that you have been struck down by lightning. One of those times was at a meeting with residents on the White City estate. The opposition leader had just damned the administration and called for more 'affordable housing'. This political buzzword sounds marvellous given that all houses are affordable to those who can afford them.

In fact he was calling for more taxpayer subsidised public housing also known as 'social housing'. The response from the audience was a classic. It stopped us both in our tracks: 'We want more affordable housing but no more welfare housing!' This was the first time that I had heard 'welfare' applied to housing and yet it is by far the most accurate description of social housing today.

In so many ways the 21st-century social evil is 'welfare dependency' fuelled by schools which give our kids only a 50% chance of reaching the minimum standard of employability, despite being designated 'good' or 'outstanding' and a social housing system driven by numbers and need which fosters a culture of entitlement and promotes a race to the bottom.

A borough of contrasts

Hammersmith & Fulham Council faces the inner-city conundrum of extremes of poverty and wealth. Hammersmith & Fulham is similar to other inner London boroughs with overall a relatively affluent populace but with pockets of significant deprivation. So whilst the borough has the fourth highest house prices in the country it is also the 38th most deprived borough according to the government's Index of Multiple Deprivation 2007 assessment.

The neighbourhoods experiencing the most significant levels of deprivation (for example child poverty, higher levels of unemployment, poor housing) are those with high levels of social rented housing, including our larger council housing estates. We believe passionately in the 'hand up' rather than a hand out and the council's drive is to make Hammersmith & Fulham the 'Borough of Opportunity' through a commitment to schools of choice and decent neighbourhoods that tackles concentrations of poverty.

Schools of choice

Some of the highest performing secondary schools in Britain are located in Hammersmith & Fulham. These are all voluntary aided church schools: the London Oratory (Catholic boys), Lady Margaret (Church of England girls), both of which have successful sixth forms, and Sacred Heart High (Catholic girls). They are all heavily oversubscribed.

However, in 2006 there were still over 1,400 surplus places in our community secondary schools. The picture is now changing. These schools are becoming increasingly popular as standards improve and there are now only 700 surplus places in the secondary sector. In 2006, only 36% of parents were choosing local schools, but in the current Year 7, 42% of pupils are borough residents.

A significant percentage of parents still choose to educate their children privately and we will continue to reverse that trend through major investment in state-of-the-art secondary schools. The national Building Schools for the Future programme (which helps to fund the rebuilding of schools and deliver new facilities) offers a great opportunity to transform secondary education, enabling us to expand two popular schools and creating sixth forms in every school. Phoenix High School opens its new sixth form in 2010 and Lady Margaret doubles the size of its sixth form as well next year, improving the curriculum offer at post-16 across the borough.

Parents also want greater choice. We are delivering this by creating more academies and trust schools. We set up an independent Fulham Schools Commission led by Baroness Perry, formerly Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools.

It involved leaders of higher education institutions and two local head teachers and a former director of education from another London borough and spent two months meeting parents, heads, governors, teachers and others involved in the schools.

It made several clear recommendations which we are now implementing for the whole borough.

These include:
* Supporting the Mercers' and the IT livery companies who are sponsoring the new Hammersmith Academy due to open in 2011. Building started in May 2009.
* Supporting the creation of the new Fulham College Trust School. This brings together two of our community schools (Henry Compton and Fulham Cross) in a hard federation since 1 September 2009. The core curriculum at this school will be enhanced through collaboration with the nearby 16–19 school (William Morris Sixth Form); by involving a number of local partners such as Roehampton University, Latymer School, and Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. This new school will continue to specialise in science and languages, as well developing new sports and performing arts facilities. Other partners also include Fulham Football Club, and the Lyric Theatre, who have recently been awarded £3 million from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to build a £15 million "teaching hospital of the arts" attached to the theatre that will offer young people a range of apprenticeships and formal qualifications, such as the new Creative and Media Diploma.
*Planning one of the country's first bilingual primary schools in partnership with the local French lycée and a local Catholic primary school, due to start in 2010.

Decent neighbourhoods

Decent neighbourhoods are neighbourhoods that work. However, it is not untypical on larger council housing estates to see joblessness levels among working age tenants that are twice as high as the London average of just over 13%. General health is also poorer and levels of satisfaction with neighbourhood and services are generally below the borough averages. People also feel less safe and estates can feel separate and alienated from the neighbourhoods that surround them. These are also areas where expenditure on regeneration initiatives (single regeneration budget, New Deal for Communities) and continuing public sector spend is significant. But the expenditure has not yielded the results that we expected. Why?

Race to the bottom

A 2007 government-commissioned study, the Future of Social Housing, by Professor John Hills provided some useful insights. The key findings from the report reflect a national position of a residualisation of social housing. A combination of reasons, including nationally-determined social rent allocation priorities, has led the original purpose of social housing (to provide housing to those lower or modestly paid workers) to be replaced by a welfare model where only those in greatest need are housed.

This not only has the inevitable effect of concentrating poverty but creates perverse incentives to 'become' homeless or establish a worse housing position (described by Sir Robin Wales the Labour Leader of Newham Council as the 'race to the bottom'). Public housing itself begins to have a poor public image being seen as a housing tenure not of opportunity but of last resort.

Working neighbourhoods

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is determined to put opportunity back into the housing options that we offer. Although councils are restricted in terms of providing additional priority to working households for social housing, Hammersmith & Fulham Council has now established a working household quota which will see in 2009/10 13.5% of all new social rent lets going to key worker and low-income households. We believe this provides incentives to work and supports working households on low incomes. Our Lone Parent Initiative, for instance, offers social rented housing to lone parents in housing need who sustain work for a minimum of six months.

Our housing advice services focus on addressing an individual's needs in the round, looking to secure accommodation where we can for those threatened with homelessness and seeking to provide a range of options for those needing to move. Our successes are there for all to see with the numbers of homeless households accepted being reduced to less than a third of the number of households accepted five years ago (159 in 2008/09; 644 in 2003/04).

Following on from previous years' successes, the council in 2009/10 has set a target of arranging 450 lets into the private sector for households, including homeless households, seeking accommodation. The private rented sector today "provides choice and through the councils various lettings initiatives good quality accommodation". Indeed for more and more households the private sector is fast becoming the preferred tenure for many of those seeking help from the council.

Our housing options services are beginning to provide incentives to work and housing options which do not rely on our residents proving how badly off they are. The next step for Hammersmith & Fulham is to develop an enhanced housing options service. This service, partly sponsored by the Department of Communities and Local Government, will focus our efforts even further in working with those at risk of becoming homeless (particularly young people from our council estates) providing targeted training and employment advice and support and a range of services, including mentoring services, aimed at improving self-confidence and esteem, leading to greater personal reliance and to less dependency.

The ultimate aim for the council is to increase employment and increase incomes among its less well-off residents and in this way improve housing opportunities and particularly make homeownership viable for more residents.

Asset management

In this time of economic downturn, however, the council must also look to adapt and change its housing offers and maximise use of its existing stock. That is why we have put in place a dedicated underoccupation and overcrowding team to encourage mobility. That is why over the next year over 280 rent-to-buy units will become available in the borough for working households. This will provide accommodation at 80% of the market rent, with the option for the occupier to buy at any time. This will add to the 644 low-cost homeownership and key worker and intermediate rent units developed in the borough since April 2006.

We are also offering first-time buyer grants to up to 25 households and are intending to launch a reward and purchase scheme later this summer, which will offer up to £40,000 to council tenants to assist with purchase. Such arrangements will provide a bridge into homeownership to those with low or no deposits: the goal for the majority of our residents.

Support for change

There is growing support for change among social housing professionals. However, change of this kind is never easy and we will learn both from our successes and mistakes. The programme that we have developed is innovative and challenges a one-dimensional social housing system driven entirely by housing need.

Regional and central controls, such as those that limit locally determined allocation policies or restrict right-to-buy discounts, make it even harder to meet local needs and demands and changes are required to provide a greater degree of local leadership to improve deprived neighbourhoods once and for all. However, with determination and a clear vision and objectives at Hammersmith & Fulham Council we are slowly moving away from a social housing system that has a tendency to build in dependency to one which rewards, incentivises and provides opportunities to progress.

The state plays its part in providing the opportunity to get on in life, but the individual still has to seize it. Much remains to be done to remove the disincentives for people to take personal responsibility for their own lives.

Stephen Greenhalgh is Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and has been a local councillor for over 13 years. He also heads up the Conservative Councils Innovation Unit.

Much credit for the Conservative resurgence in Hammersmith & Fulham has been attributed to his leadership, notable achievements of which include cutting council tax by 3% three years in a row, improving service standards from a three star to a maximum four star official rating, driving up residents' satisfaction with council services markedly and cracking down on crime, with the only New York-style 24 hour council-funded police teams in the UK.

Perpetrators or victims?

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:49 GMT

Rarely will a week go by without a dramatic heading about the problems of the 'youth of today', as we saw in May 2009 after Ministry of Justice figures showed that Persistent Young Offenders in England and Wales had increased from just under 10,000 in 1997 to nearly 16,000 in 2008.

A survey two years ago by Young People Now magazine found around 78% of national media coverage about young people is negative. The same survey showed this was particularly true of broadcast media which portrayed young people in an unfavourable light in 87% of coverage.

Whether this negativity is the media influence or other factors, the end result is the same – a public perception that young people are perpetrators. For example, a survey in my own authority in 2008 showed that Bridgend County residents were worried about young people and crime. Over 40% admitted to being nervous of walking past a group of young people. To add to this, 74% believed that lack of parental discipline contributed to crime in the area.

Hoodies or goodies?

Is this fair? The public perception does not always correlate with the facts. In Bridgend County, we had a relatively small number of offenders in 2008 – 357 people under 25 compared to a total population of young people of 40,106. At the same time anti-social behaviour, which is the offence most commonly associated with young people, fell by 25% from 107 to 80.

So, if the vast majority of young people are not the perpetrators of crime, are they victims? In Bridgend, between May 2008 and April 2009, there were 515 young victims of crime and 123 young persons charged with an offence. Clearly this shows that there were significantly more young people who were victims of crime than perpetrators of it.

This is not to say I don't recognise the significant hurt and damage that can be caused to communities by our youngest citizens. No one should have to live their lives in fear of violence, threats or anti-social behaviour, but some do because of a minority of young people. That's why as a society we need to work together to tackle youth offending, rather than just accept it as a sign of the times.

Hurtful headlines

However, it is extremely important to highlight the challenges facing our young people who are frequently the victims of undeserved bad press.
In my local authority area I know this only too well – over the past 18 months or so Bridgend County Borough has seen a cluster of suicides affecting young people. These young people were not victims of crime, but victims of circumstances which took them to a place which many of us would not be able to understand. It brought home to all residents of Bridgend the vulnerability of some of our young people and the pressures they face in modern life.

The sadness of the situation demanded sympathy, support and a response to make a difference. That happened locally with an extraordinary level of 'togetherness' from all the agencies dealing with it and the communities living with it. At the same time, many people working in the media probably didn't think how their hurtful headlines were affecting the young residents of a beautiful and diverse borough.

Beyond stereotypes

Tags and labels are unhelpful. We need to move away from stereotypes and judge by actions, regardless of age. During the period of intense publicity about the suicides in Bridgend, young people responded quickly through initiatives such as a peer mentoring scheme where older children in schools provided advice, guidance and friendship to younger pupils. Another moving example was of three teenagers who had lost friends and family through suicide not only supporting each other but designing a leaflet and website to help other young people who had lost people close to them or who are contemplating taking their own lives.

I have also seen young people come together to champion issues they believe in through the Bridgend Youth Council: the oldest and most established organisation of its type in Wales. Chief officers and senior councillors are frequently impressed and challenged by this impressive group of teenagers who are not afraid to ask the difficult questions. Role models have emerged, such as the Bridgend student who was presented with the 'Young Enterprise Wales Young Achiever' Award at the 'Welsh Woman of the Year 2008' ceremony.

Young offenders have also contributed positively and have been involved in many reparation projects. For example, bringing a sports court covered in graffiti, stones and glass back into use for the community by cleaning up the debris and repainting walls.

My conclusion is this – young people should not been seen as perpetrators or victims – in fact they would object to being categorised as such. Rather, they are individuals who have great capacity to help others and a real desire to make a difference.

Bridgend County and suicides

Suicide is a national problem and last autumn the Welsh Assembly Government published a draft National Action Plan aimed at reducing incidents of suicide and self harm across Wales in recognition of this. In addition, the Bridgend Local Service Board (LSB) continues to follow its own local suicide prevention strategy which was being developed a year before the media coverage of the deaths began.

The spark for the last year's international interest in deaths among young people in Bridgend County was a media release by the Wales News press agency which said 'a teenage suicide cult' was 'sweeping through a town with seven young people killing themselves in copycat deaths'. It went on to suggest that Bridgend was the 'suicide capital of Britain' and that 'internet websites may be to blame'. There has never been any such evidence of a cult or a link to any websites.

Among the headlines last year, Bridgend was described as a 'death town' a 'valley of death' a place where youngsters went on 'suicide sprees' and a town in the midst of a 'suicide epidemic'. Bridgend as a town has never seen a cluster of suicides among young people. Deaths which have been reported in the last two years relate to the much wider area of the county borough (population about 130,000). Bridgend County is not unique in the numbers of people who take their own lives.

I pay tribute to the strength of our communities in dealing with these tragic events and to the wealth of support offered by this local authority and its partners. The LSB fully supports the call to encourage the media to improve the sensitive reporting of mental health and suicide.

Dr Jo Farrar is Chief Executive of Bridgend County Borough Council. Previously Dr Farrar was Assistant Chief Executive with Cardiff Council; Assistant Chief Executive at LB Camden; and Deputy Director of Reform Strategy at the Cabinet Office.

The rediscovery of social capitalism

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:44 GMT

In South Tyneside, over half our residents live in neighbourhoods ranked in the 25% most deprived in England. But even in its industrial heyday, our borough always faced the challenge of deprivation – what was different then was the strength of the social networks that helped sustain our communities through difficult times. I'm now convinced that building social capital is the answer to many of the issues facing communities right now.

The other difference back then was the absence of a strong welfare state. The pioneering reforms of Sir William Beveridge and others all had laudable aims, and have done great things, but a side-effect of these well-meaning interventions has been the effective 'nationalisation' of community life – a nationalisation that has outlasted all the other state-owned monoliths. The management of community life has been so effectively outsourced to councils, the police and others that it bred a feeling of powerlessness and perhaps dependency in our communities that has contributed to abdication of responsibility in many areas.

Social networks

Robert Putnam's groundbreaking work on 'social capital' has been key to our understanding of how altruistic behaviour and successful communities depend on strong social networks. A major research programme at Binghamton University in New York state has recently concluded that the stronger a person's social networks the more likely they are to want to give back to society.

We're fortunate in South Tyneside that a lot of the old community spirit still lives on, and I'm clear that if we really want to start making a difference for our communities we need to nourish these networks, and tap into them where appropriate – harnessing the relationships and interests which exist already.

Policy-makers far too often reach for blunt instruments like laws, regulations, state spending, structural reform and taxes, but this over-reliance potentially alienates the public still further by crowding out existing social networks. Indeed, Matthew Taylor has argued persuasively that policy-makers have underestimated the power of social norms — and their potential to lead change. So, the management of domestic refuse recycling, for example, went from being the council's responsibility alone, to one where the householder now sorts it out — building and harnessing social capacity without anyone really noticing.

Supporting neighbourhoods

Our neighbourhood support structures are the keystone in our programme to cherish social capital In South Tyneside. We know that our residents are the people best placed to come up with solutions to problems in their neighbourhoods, and our 'participatory appraisal' harnesses this by encouraging and supporting people to take an active role in their community to make change happen. One resident told us that this really worked because 'they showed us how to get things done' – and it's at that interface between local knowledge and enthusiasm, and the resources and expertise of the council or its partners that the most exciting work often happens.

So that's why we're piloting a programme worth £1.5M to recruit 'community entrepreneurs', who'll be employed to work in their own communities, with their own neighbours to design their own pathways out of poverty. But alongside this we want to strengthen social networks that already exist, while supporting and stretching them to do more. That is why we have worked closely with our faith communities to develop the 'Happy at home' project, which tackles isolation in older people through a bank of volunteers who pay regular befriending visits to older people. The 'demographic tsunami', where we know the person who will live to be 120 has already been born means we need to be more creative about how we combat isolation as the eligibility bar for social care is raised higher and higher.

We also know it is important to hold up a mirror to the inspiring things that our communities do without our involvement, and reflect them back through events like our annual Pride Awards in South Tyneside which goes from strength to strength and celebrate acts of social value in communities with categories such as safer neighbourhoods, role models, community groups and carer of the year - all raising the profile of altruism and the innate capacity that our communities possess to build social capital formally.
If we want to unlock that potential we need to engage our communities as partners, not as passive recipients of services.

But too often professionals don't fully understand the landscape of public services, in which case the public won't either, so we need to be crystal clear about the services we offer, and how they're accessed. In doing so local councils can perform a unique function in breaking down organisational barriers within and between the public, voluntary and community sectors, help the public to understand what services exist, and facilitate new collaborations.

Working together with the public

Such a process can't be led by Whitehall – or the town hall or other partners in the public sector. It means all of us working together towards a less interventionist and more enabling state. Local strategic partnerships must become truly transformative spaces in which service leaders are encouraged to lead, to do more than it says on their business cards, and to focus on building the capacity of communities rather than narrow organisational imperatives.

That is why we have placed wellbeing, innovation and the cultivation of social capital at the heart of our local area agreement (LAA).
As we enter a period of public sector austerity, then being smart enough to plug into existing networks (and realising when less is more) is key to achieving a stronger multiplier effect in service delivery. Fostering social capital will also help us strengthen local democracy, and give us a real mandate to deliver change.

When the public become more actively engaged in collective decision-making, then they are more inclined to get involved and contribute to the collective capacity of society. This would provide an ideal opportunity for elected members to reclaim their community leadership role where this has been eroded.

Some may be unnerved by engaging directly with the public but really we need to harness that passion. Consensus is sometimes unhealthy in a democracy, because it's in that creative tension where real solutions are forged, and it is in that open dialogue with our communities that trust is built, and social capital is created.

Irene Lucas CBE is Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council. She has held a number of public appointments including the BBC and the Sports Council of England and has worked with the FA, Premier League, Department of Culture Media and Sport and Sport England. She is currently a board member of the Institute of Public Policy Research (North East). She will be taking up the DCLG post of Director General, Local Government and Regeneration later this year.

Responsible businesses

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:40 GMT

George and Richard Cadbury, Titus Salt, Lord Leverhulme and Joseph Rowntree were not only entrepreneurs but social reformers. They built healthy, sustainable communities that continue to thrive today, at the same time as creating profitable enterprises. Though we're living in a period of economic constraint, businesses can and should be responsible for finding solutions to the challenges that society faces.

Why the decline in community?

Every generation has been plagued by social ills, but they change over time and will continue to do so. The common thread that runs through today's so-called 'social evils' is the decline of community. As Britain moved from a manufacturing economy to a service one, the industries that defined so many communities (mining, steel, car making, textile) disappeared. The back-to-back terraces that characterised our industrial landscape may have lacked mod cons but they provided people with an identity, a sense of place and a set of shared values.

Globalisation bought business consolidation and industrial parks and secure office campuses replaced factories. The beacons of local communities – the pub, the park, the school and even the church – have (in many neighbourhoods) closed. The vacuum filled by Victorian social reformers (healthcare, education, sanitation, clean water and housing) is now occupied by the welfare state.

In the second half of the 20th century competition between businesses delivered significant benefits for the economy, consumers and society in general and gave millions of people a better standard of living and greater disposable income. However, the pursuit of shareholder value alone, if it is the only determinant of 'success', can be argued to have contributed to big business' abdication of their wider responsibilities to society. I would argue that blaming business alone for the decline in community is too simplistic. Other institutions, public and third sector, have also been players in this decline.

Responsibility in the post-recession era

Companies and individuals are now re-appraising their responsibilities in the wake of the global recession. Seismic and profound shifts in society's attitudes and behaviour are already taking place. People are anxious about the future and particularly what the prospects will be for their children.
Recently I listened to a group of mothers from London talk about trust. Top of their list were Google, the NHS and supermarkets. At the bottom were politicians, the banks and the tabloid media. But what differentiates those who are trusted and those who are not?

It's too simple to say that those who are not trusted are those who helped to get us into the current mess. For me, it's the difference between those who are judged as 'problem makers' and those who help ordinary people and are judged to be solution providers.

That's why supermarkets remain trusted because, despite rising prices, they provide commonsense solutions to everyday problems.

In uncertain times people look for leadership and vision to give them hope as to what the future looks like. They are turning to family and friends and longing for a return to community values in this search for hope. Politicians tuned into this zeitgeist put forward a vision of local empowerment with people in control of the decisions that will shape their communities. It remains unclear to me, however, how such a concept will benefit those people who feel detached from society. The post-recession business model will be more transparent as empowered consumers hold companies to account for the impact they have on society.

'Responsibility'

To rebuild trust in business and help tackle the challenges that face our communities a new breed of social reformer will emerge who recognises that business has three core obligations to society – economic, social and environmental – what I have termed 'Responsibility'.

Generating revenue and profits through which shareholder and stakeholder interests can be managed must remain the core purpose of business. But to build healthy, sustainable communities that benefit the many, not the few, will require business to think longer term and develop new models for managing and evaluating their social and environmental responsibilities.

By understanding what matters to their customers, colleagues and the wider community, companies can develop integrated national programmes on the issues that are most relevant to their business. Solutions, though, are unlikely to be delivered nationally. Tackling issues such as drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness or crime require initiatives that are tailored to local circumstances.

Nor is it businesses role to tackle these issues alone. We need to create collaborative delivery models with the public and third sectors. These partnerships need to engender the importance of personal responsibility to reconnect people to the communities they live in.

A great example of this approach is in Burnley where ASDA has been working with stakeholders from across the public and private sectors to tackle criminal damage, anti-social behaviour and nuisance associated with young people. As a result of this there has been a noticeable reduction in incidents of criminal damage and anti-social behaviour. This has resulted in far fewer people being victimised and nearly 700 less deployments for police officers in less than six months.

Conclusion

Tough economic times are when business needs to demonstrate that it takes its responsibilities seriously. Building new partnership models that leverage expertise from across the private, public and third sectors is good business. We can rediscover the values of earlier entrepreneurs and find new ways of managing business that make commercial sense and create stronger communities.

Paul Kelly is External Affairs & Corporate Responsibility Director at ASDA. He is Chair of the ASDA Foundation, a board member of the British Retail Consortium and the School Food Trust and a member of the Council of Food Policy Advisers. He also chaired Plough to Plate for Business in the Community which examined corporate responsibility in the food chain.

Social evil and health inequalities

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:35 GMT

One of the main echoes that can be heard from Rowntree's work on social evils 100 years ago is the health of the public. But what we hear from that time is distorted by the 100-year distance. There are some similarities but a lot of differences.

Its true that in 2009 health inequalities between the 5% worst off and the 5% best off are still very large – that's a similarity. But over those 100 years the whole distribution curve of the nation's health has shifted very dramatically in the direction of better health. People live longer and have better health. For nearly everyone the destruction of the threat of many infectious diseases through public works and medical technology has changed the nature of the health of the public. That's a difference.

So I have little time for those that say the echo from there to here is in any way 'the same'. It isn't. Rowntree would look at the healthy nature of the population today and marvel. However, there are still some social evil aspects of the health of the public.

East end ill-health: then and now

In London, the map of the Jubilee Line describes a journey between Westminster and Canning Town. If you overlay that on a map of life-expectancy, it shows that a year of life is lost for every stop on the tube eastwards. Rowntree would recognise the gradient of that inequality and would be saddened by it; but he would recognise nothing else about the health of the people in those areas.

Rowntree combined a belief in self-help, alongside that of structural social reform, so he would recognise that one of the aims of social reform has not just been to improve the structures around the disadvantaged but to increase their capacity to gain greater influence over their own lives. Some things can be done to help people improve their health, but it is the capacity and ability to do that with your own life that is key.

Over the past 20 years for many better-off people, concern and activity about our own health has become a behavioural driver. Exercise, better food, less tobacco abuse have all engaged millions more people than ever before. For people like me who have grown to recognise that we can do something about our lives in many areas, improving our health has become one of the signs of our greater control. This doesn't just improve my health, it also gives me a greater say in my life – as does my politics, my ability to earn good money and my ability to confidently question authority in its on terms. My health, like my life, can be influenced by my actions.

'We just aren't very well round here…'

But others do not believe that their actions can affect anything very much. They believe they have not done well at school not because of poor teaching, but because they are not very bright. Their health, like so many other things about their world, is just a given. It is the bad luck of people who live round here. They don't therefore believe that their actions can affect their health. Health, like so much of life, is something that is immutable and a given and done to them.

So the problem for health improvement is the same as for so many other inequality evils: how can more people develop higher aspiration and the capability to work with that aspiration to take more control over their lives? When it is put this way, we know that class and background social issues can never determine social aspiration. We all know of people from a range of ethnicities and disadvantages who have powerful aspirations and the capacity to fulfil them. We need to understand what the triggers are for these people in their lives that provide them with aspiration and capability.

But for very many people, these social factors do curb their capacity to meet health aspirations and, for the health of the nation, this is a disaster. Being fatalistic about health and mortality doesn't just lead to illness-inducing behaviour around smoking, alcohol and exercise, it means that people do not report the pain in their chest or the lump in their breast very early for diagnosis because – 'well, there is nothing you can do!' Inequality in cancer death rates comes from very late presentation caused in part by this fatalism.

Government and the equalisation of aspiration

So what can government do about this? And this is where Rowntree would have had to work through a quandary. If we are trying to create greater aspiration for control over their lives and their health, then telling people what to do and how to live their lives seems a very poor way of helping people have more control. Many government behaviours in public health are aimed at banning activities as the only way of changing behaviour.

That may make government feel it has done something, but being told how to live your life by Whitehall does not increase your capacity to run your own life.

There is also something deeply disturbing in class terms about this. Health improving behaviours are carried out voluntarily by middle-class people. We work it out, how to fit it into our lives and take a little more control on our terms. And then, not knowing what to do for other people who don't live like us, we organise government to tell them what to do. Whatever the morality of that, as I say, this does not induce greater control.

So how can government work with people whose health aspiration has been blocked?

First, it must recognise that it is not good at it. The public does not feel that government can get the subtle messages across that might change health aspiration and capability. In these behavioural terms 'the public' barely exists. But a segmented approach to marketing ideas about aspiration and health improvement is essential. Even if they have the same life-expectancy, treating a 60-year-old Bengali woman the same way as a 60-year-old ex pit man will not work for either. Both may have low health aspiration, but will change in their own ways.

Second, small steps are the most realistic. If you are very overweight, being told that an Olympic athlete is your role model will not work. Such an athlete looks as if they come from another planet. Being told to cook a three-course meal every day is hopeless if you have never cooked vegetables. If we are not careful, improving people's health aspirations can very easily feel like 'make your life like mine!', and the old problem of class imposition of lifestyle re-emerges.

Third, let's link health improvement to other improvements in control. Health is not a separate issue here. Men and women across the country are struggling for greater control over, for example, safety in their community; over getting control of their debt rather than having it control them; over trying to get the school to listen to what they are saying about their child's behaviour and aspirations.

Every day there are millions of moments where people refuse to be socially determined by what goes on around them. Those of us involved in health improvement need to recognise each of those moments as a time and place to say – 'health is like this too'. It is something you can do something about and just like the criminal neighbours, the fear of the credit bill and the non-committal headteacher, you can make a difference to your life.
I think Rowntree would have been good at that.

Paul Corrigan has had four careers. He was a social science academic, a senior manager in local government, a health policy adviser to two secretaries of state and Prime Minister Tony Blair and is now a management consultant and executive coach.

Helping school leavers

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:30 GMT

Shocking figures are emerging about the rapid growth in youth unemployment, as the recession goes on. A recent report from the Local Government Association (Hidden Talents: Re-engaging Young People) predicts that one million young people will soon be out of work – equivalent to a city the size of Birmingham populated entirely with young people, with much talent and energy to offer, but unable to break into the world of work.

In response, the government has brought forward a series of initiatives aimed principally at unemployed 18–24 year olds – including swifter entry into New Deal support, a guarantee of a job or training place after 12 months of unemployment and a Future Jobs Fund to create sustainable employment opportunities. Welcome as these measures are, they seem to offer nothing for young people aged 16 and 17.

According to the latest national statistics, just over 200,000 16 and 17 year olds in the UK were unemployed in the second quarter of 2009, with an unemployment rate of 30% for the age group (of those seeking work). While most have been jobless for less than six months, there has been an alarming rise in the number out of work for more 12 months: up 50% on last year, to 20,000.

These figures are deeply worrying. We know from the last recession that long-term unemployment at this age can have 'scarring' effect on future employment and earnings' prospects and that those with lower level skills are worse affected. As a recent report from the Work Foundation (Unemployment and the Role of the Third Sector) observed 'This can be the beginning of a cycle of disadvantage that is transmitted across generations'. Yet there appear to be no employment initiatives targeted at this age group, beyond a community service scheme.

Why the lack of focus on unemployed 16 and 17 year olds?

Part of the explanation must lie in the policy presumption, reinforced by last year's Education and Skills Act, that young people in England should continue in education and training until they are 18. This ambitious reform programme is commonly (and misleadingly) referred to as 'raising the school leaving age'.

The main thrust of policy development so far has been on broadening the learning offer – with new diplomas, more apprenticeships and a foundation learning tier – and overhauling the planning and delivery of 14–19 education and training. There have also been a variety of pilots focused on re-engaging young people in learning – learning agreements, activity agreements and entry to learning. There is a great deal to be welcomed but again, a critical element remains missing: the employment pathway.

Let us not forget that employment will remain an option for 16 and 17 year olds when the Education and Skills Act comes into force, providing it involves a minimum level of accredited training. Thus far, policy-makers have had little to say on their strategy for young people in jobs without training, let alone for those who are unemployed.

Tackling 'the NEET problem'

Yet it is progress on this front which will be key to making inroads into the so-called 'NEET' population (young people not in education, employment or training). The fact is that many young people want to work or train in the workplace when they are 16 and this may be the best option for them, playing to their strengths and interests better than academic or theoretical vocational learning in a school or college environment.

Last year Barnardo's carried out research with young people in our vocational training and youth support services across the UK, who were (or had recently been) NEET (see Second Chances: Re-engaging Young People in Education and Training). One of the most striking findings – contrary to media stereotypes about idle, feckless youngsters – was how motivated these young people were to work or to learn new skills which would lead to a job.

But their motivation risked turning to disaffection in the face of desperately few opportunities in the areas in which they lived. Already trapped in unemployment, and many of them living in communities which have already suffered generational unemployment, there is a real danger that these young people will come to believe that work is not, and will never be, for them.
The research threw light on some of the ways in which spending time in the workplace helped to transform attitudes and aspirations.

Young people who had struggled with the rules and restrictions of the school environment rapidly came to understand the need to be punctual, reliable and presentable to get – and keep – a job. They found it easier to accept rules in the workplace and appreciated being treated like an adult.
Young people not only gained new vocational skills in the workplace, but they grew in confidence and maturity. They enjoyed learning alongside experienced tradespeople and gaining industry certificates, for example in construction site safety or forklift truck driving, which would help them to get jobs in future.

Partnerships with supportive local employers make this sort of opportunity possible. There is a constant need for more such opportunities, ranging from short tasters to training placements, apprenticeships and real jobs. Relationships with employers need to be built and sustained at local level, but in today's challenging economic circumstances, there is an urgent need for government to think creatively about how to encourage employers to open their doors to many more disadvantaged young people.

It would be unfair to say that the government has neglected the work-based route altogether, given the tremendous effort being devoted to expanding apprenticeships. But here too, we need to sharpen the focus on disadvantaged young school leavers. Beneath a healthy overall growth rate of 19% in level 2 apprenticeships starting during 2007/08, the number of 16-18 year olds embarking on this route grew by less than 2%, while completions fell by 6%.

Regrettably, apprenticeships remain beyond the reach of many of Barnardo's trainees, whose difficult childhoods and failure to achieve all they were capable of in school, often mean that they lack the GCSE results and social skills sought by employers. But with a little support and the chance to prove what they are capable of, they can go on to become hard-working and reliable employees.

Urgent need for action

Barnardo's supported the Education and Skills Act 2008 because we believed it represented an historic opportunity to improve opportunities for the thousands of disadvantaged young people who leave education at 16, ill-equipped for the modern workplace. As a nation we have been complacent in accepting such a high level of wastage.

But while the government, regional and local partners across England are frantically laying the groundwork to deliver on this ambitious reform programme, thousands of 16 and 17 year olds have already left education and are trapped in unemployment. They include some of our most disadvantaged and vulnerable youngsters. Let's not wait until they're 18 to help them find a job or a training place: they need real opportunities and they need them now.

Martin Narey is the Chief Executive of Barnardo's. Previously he was director general of the Prison Service, chief executive of the National Offender Management Service and permanent secretary at the Home Office.

Anne Pinney is an Assistant Director in Barnardo's Policy & Research Unit, leading on education.

Authenticity, not celebrity

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:41:25 GMT

Authenticity is a key ingredient for all kinds of professions. The American singer, Jennifer Lopez, wanted to prove she was 'real' in her song Jenny from the Block, though this assertion that she was a humble child of the Bronx was rather undermined by a video showing her billionaire lifestyle with her then partner Ben Affleck. Our elected parliamentarians also need to show that they are real and need to maintain a close identity with those who elect them. In this they have failed miserably. The public outcry at the large number of MPs involved in the recent scandal over expenses highlights once more just how great the distance is in this country between the governor and the governed.

Duck house, moats and flipping

That anyone could have thought the cleansing of a moat, the flipping of houses and the incredible purchase of a duck house was anything other than just plain wrong shows how far removed professional politicians have become from the lives of the people they serve, and that their rules are not the same as those of their voters.

While many MPs may well deserve punishment, there are some inherent dangers in the media frenzy that this has whipped up. The first is a general feeling, expressed in many opinion polls, that MPs are 'all the same' and 'all at it'. The truth is far from this and Westminster still has many honourable members. But the tainting of our political life has opened up another trend, that being the celebrity culture, so loved by our tabloid newspapers, moving into mainstream politics.

The obvious problem with this is that so-called 'celebrities' are often just as distant from the average citizen as MPs. Unlike the A-list star, most of us expect to pay for things rather than simply asking shops to give us goods in order that we endorse them with our personal brand. The odd thing is that many aspire to join this celebrity culture, precisely because 'they' live a glittering lifestyle and are apart from 'us'. It is the difference of the celebrity lifestyle that is its pull. The expenses scandal has shown that it is sameness that we want from our politicians.

But many believe that the Westminster parliament has too many politicians who have spent most of their working life facing inward toward Whitehall and Westminster and have far too little experience of sameness, or of real life. The outpourings of numerous thinktanks do not produce fully-rounded human beings all of the time.

Local politicians who live and work in their communities

But if Parliament is a closed world, and the 'celebrities' whose existences are featured in magazines such as Hello are also living a somewhat unreal existence, then who should we turn to? We need ordinary people who live real lives engaging in mainstream politics. You could do far worse than look at local councillors, many of whom become involved in local politics not through some great machine-like process but because of a genuine feeling that they wish to get something done in their communities.

Local politicians live and work in their local communities and, while it is often said that they do not fully represent the gender and ethnic make up of the nation, the diversity in background is far greater than the upper echelons of our current political parties.

Over the next few months people are going to come up with all kinds of suggestions for reforming our political processes. But it is hard to see a structural solution to an essentially political problem. Any system that doesn't bring in a whole new cadre of MPs, as well as fundamentally challenge the institution of parliament will simply not be enough.

Political parties have a role to play in ensuring that they put forward candidates with deep commitments to the area they serve and with real experience of ordinary life. If they do not, then they too may become increasingly irrelevant. We all need to play our part in upping the calibre of politicians or else local people may stop looking to the mainstream political parties to send to Westminster. If that happens then, who knows, we could see a version of Celebrity Big Brother replacing the ballot box.

Allowing such distance to be established between the governor and the citizen may well be a social evil in itself, and it is certainly a fertile ground for other evils to develop.

David Clark is Director General of SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executive and Senior Managers). He was appointed in July 2000. Prior to joining SOLACE, he was Chief Executive of City of York Council, one of the first unitary authorities created under the last reorganisation of local government. Prior to joining York, David was the Director of the Commission for Local Democracy. He has also worked for the Local Government Information Unit, MIND, the National Mental Health Charity and for the London Borough of Greenwich.