Children and Social Exclusion

8/3/2019 Children and Social Exclusion

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Children, familiesand soCial exClusion

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Kt m, m B

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Children, amilies and

soCial exClusion

New approaches to prevention

Kate Morris, Marian Barnes and Paul Mason


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This edition published in Great Britain in 2009 by

The Policy Press

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iii

Ctt

Acknowledgements iv

one Introduction 1

two Social exclusion, child welfare and well-being 5

three Contemporary issues for preventative child welfare 29

our The development of preventative policy and practice: 43

an overview

fve The Childrens Fund: strategies for social inclusion 67

six The Childrens Fund: activities and impacts of 85

partnership strategies

seven New understandings for prevention 111

eight Conclusion: effective preventative approaches 129

References 145

Index 157


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Children,amiliesandsocialexclusion

ackwgt

This book draws on the work o the National Evaluation o the

Childrens Fund and we would like to thank all the colleagues who werepart o this evaluation team, the sta who worked within the Childrens

Fund and the Department or Children, Schools and Families, and the

children and amilies who worked with the evaluation.

We would also like to thank all our riends and amilies or their

support and tolerance, including Claire and Bibi, Bill, Jenny and Daniel,

and Dot Morris.


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one

itct

This book seeks to explore the new understandings that are necessary

or preventative policy and practice in child welare in the changing

UK policy context. The discussion and analysis draw on empirical data

rom the National Evaluation o the Childrens Fund (NCF). But our

aim here is not simply to report the results o that evaluation we have

done that elsewhere (Barnes et al, 2006a; Beirens et al, 2006; Edwards

et al, 2006; Hughes and Fielding, 2006; Mason et al, 2006; Morris et

al, 2006; Prior et al, 2006). In this book we are seeking to understand

the Childrens Fund in the context o changing ideas about child and

amily policy and broader thinking about the nature o social exclusion

and how this might be challenged. One o the central concepts guiding

the design o the Childrens Fund was prevention (alongside partnership

and participation). In very broad terms, the overarching objective

was to stimulate and support the development o local collaborative

services that aimed to reduce or prevent social exclusion o children

and young people. But as we will see, the concept o prevention wasapplied rather more restrictively when it came to detailing specic sub-

objectives or the Fund, and the slippery nature o the concept became

very evident when practitioners started to consider just what types o

activities ocused on what groups o children would t the criteria

or prevention set out in the national guidance or implementation.

As a result o our studies o the way in which people interpreted and

implemented the idea o prevention in practice, we suggest a way o

thinking about what preventing social exclusion can mean and the

implications o this or dierent strategies that might be applied in

dierent contexts.

As we explore in detail in Chapter Four, the Childrens Fund was

set up in 2000 as a catalyst to move orward inter-agency cooperation

and child- and amily-led preventative services in local authorities in

England. It was seen as part o a long-term strategy aimed at addressing

the risks o social exclusion and enabling children and young people

to develop as healthy, responsible and engaged citizens. It was unusual

in targeting children aged ve to 13 a group that had previouslyreceived little policy attention. It was more amiliar in its appeal to

partnership and participation as key to enabling eective solutions

to previous policy ailures, and in its objective o contributing to the


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reduction o social exclusion. Thus, it can be seen as one o a rat o

social policy initiatives launched by New Labour that were intended

to produce more collaborative working and more cohesive amilies

and communities.

evtg t C

Like most o such policy initiatives, the establishment o the Childrens

Fund was accompanied by a requirement to evaluate its eectiveness.

Each Childrens Fund partnership was required to commission a local

evaluation and, nationally, government invested over 5 million in order

to understand how the Childrens Fund worked out in practice and

what impact it had. This book is based on one strand o that evaluation.

It draws on work conducted at the University o Birmingham between

2001 and 2005, which involved case studies o the approaches being

developed to work with groups o children who might be considered

to be particularly marginalised, on other work that considered how

decisions were made to target children and young people or specic

attention within the overall strategy o the Fund and on evidence about

the way in which children and their amilies who received services

provided through the Fund experienced this and considered that it

had aected their lives.The case study work adopted a theory-o-change approach to

evaluation. This involved working with stakeholders to articulate their

objectives, the ways o working they were adopting to achieve these

objectives and the rationales underpinning these approaches (Mason

and Barnes, 2007). The resultant theory-o-change statements then

provided the structure within which the implementation o activities

and their impact were reviewed. Theory-o-change evaluation enables

researchers and those involved in the programme to assess whether

the short- and medium-term changes expected as a result o the

activities put in place are being achieved. This can inorm longer-term

implementation plans as well as enable an assessment o likely long-

term outcomes (that is, those only likely to be achieved in ve to 10

years or longer) when evaluation does not continue throughout this

period. The data collected included:

reviews o relevant documentation, including minutes o meetings,

partnership plans, local evaluation reports and monitoring returns; semi-structured interviews with strategic stakeholders and service

providers;

interviews with children and their amilies;


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3

Introduction

activity-based data collection with children, or example diaries,

group sessions and workshops; and

observational eldwork.

In addition to enabling continuing assessment o progress towardsobjectives, the value o this approach to evaluation is that it makes

explicit the assumptions on which change programmes are based and

highlights the way in which stakeholders dene the groups that they

are targeting and the problems that they are addressing. Thus, as well

as being able to report on what was done and what dierence it made

to the lives o the children and amilies making use o Childrens Fund

services, our analysis enabled us to consider how those responsible

or implementing the Childrens Fund interpreted what it was about,

who it was aimed at and how success might be understood. This, in

turn, enabled us to develop our analysis o prevention: what it meant

and how it was interpreted in practice by those seeking to use the

opportunity provided by the Childrens Fund to improve the lives o

children targeted by the initiative.

T tct t bk

The structure o this book is intended to enable the reader to explorebroader policy issues beore addressing the more specic themes o

prevention within child welare and the learning that has emerged

rom national developments and evaluations. The chapters are set out

as ollows.

In Chapter Two we consider the contested nature o the concept o

social exclusion. We go on to apply the ramework o social exclusion

that we adopted in the Childrens Fund evaluation to understand

evidence about the circumstances o the our groups o children and

young people that are the main ocus or our analysis: disabled children,

children who are reugees or asylum seekers, Gypsy/Traveller children

and children rom black and minority ethnic backgrounds. We also

consider broader evidence about the welare and well-being o children

in the UK. This provides the context within which Childrens Fund

partnerships were seeking to develop new ways o ensuring child well-

being and inclusion.

The ocus o Chapter Three is on the way in which thinking about

child welare has developed and how dierent concepts have cometo shape the discourses within which specic policies are ramed. In

particular, we consider ideas o risk and protection, the emergence o


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parenting as a particular ocus or policy action and the enduring but

shiting signicance o ideas about amily.

Chapter Four applies the preceding analyses to a consideration o the

specic preventative policies and policy initiatives through which New

Labour governments have sought to address the needs o young childrenand their amilies. This discussion reects on the perceived ailures o

previous child welare policies and highlights the main characteristics

o recent policies that have sought to move away rom an individual

children in need ocus to a broad agenda concerned with the risks

to children o social exclusion.

In Chapter Five we start to consider the Childrens Fund itsel.

Returning to our analysis o social exclusion, we consider how

Childrens Fund partnerships sought to identiy, dene and target

specic groups o children and young people that they considered

most at risk o exclusion and thus priorities or action. We also discuss

the nature o the strategies they sought to put in place to deliver

preventative outcomes.

We consider what these strategies looked like in practice in Chapter

Six. Here we describe the activities through which partnerships sought

to achieve their objectives and what children and their amilies thought

about them. We identiy short- and medium-term impacts on children

and their amilies, but raise questions about the longer-term eects othese initiatives and their capacity to address the multiple dimensions

and processes through which social exclusion works.

In Chapter Seven we set out our thinking about dierent ways

o understanding prevention, based on the previous analysis o the

Childrens Fund in practice, and relate this to the dynamics o social

exclusion. We are able to arrive at a new categorisation o preventative

activity, and rom this undertake an analysis o the underlying

assumptions about the relationship between children, amilies and the

state that are contained within dierent ways o working.

Chapter Eight seeks to draw together the key themes emerging rom

the preceding chapters. Using these themes we are able to discuss our

overall conclusions and set out the implications o developing resh

conceptual approaches to understanding the prevention o social

exclusion. We argue that traditional approaches to prevention and

preventative activity have struggled to grasp the complexity o the

multilayered responses that are required. We go on to suggest that

developing conceptual rameworks or prevention that recognise andutilise multiple dimensions o social exclusion is necessary to the

development and support o eective strategies and practices.


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5

two

sc c, c w

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itct

In this book we consider policies implemented by dierent New

Labour governments that were intended to address the problem o

social exclusion among children and young people. In particular, we

consider the experiences o the Childrens Fund in this regard. So, what

is social exclusion and how does it aect children and young people?

The adoption o a social exclusion perspective by New Labour in its

early years o government reected the aspirations or social change o

a new government ollowing long years o Conservative rule. Under

the headline Social exclusion is about more than income poverty, the

denition adopted by the government that shaped the work o the

Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) was as ollows:

Social exclusion happens when people or places suer rom

a series o problems such as unemployment, discrimination,

poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime, ill health

and amily breakdown. When such problems combine they

can create a vicious cycle.

Social exclusion can happen as a result o problems that

ace one person in their lie. But it can also start rom birth.

Being born into poverty or to parents with low skills has

a major inuence on uture lie chances. (http://archive.

cabinetoce.gov.uk/seu/pageac0b.html)

The concept o social exclusion can thus be seen to encompass multiple

actors that disadvantage children and the amilies into which they are

born. But social exclusion has always been a highly contested term

and some have argued that its adoption by New Labour as a basisrom which to develop policy was never a progressive position. Here

we consider key arguments about the nature o social exclusion and

how it has been applied in practice. We suggest that it is important


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to understand the processes o exclusion rather than considering

this as a status. We then go on to consider evidence relating to the

circumstances o children and young people and how dierent groups

become excluded.

Wt c c?

Levitas (2005) has distinguished substantially dierent discourses o

inclusion and exclusion that are evident within ocial policy and

academic analysis. She characterises these as:

a redistributive discourse (RED), which derives rom critical social

policy perspectives and highlights the necessity to overcome poverty

and inequality i inclusion is to be achieved;

a moral underclass discourse (MUD), which locates the causes o

exclusion in the moral and behavioural weakness o those who are

excluded; and

a social inclusion discourse(SID), which emphasises work as the route

to social integration and cohesion.

The concept o social exclusion has been critiqued or diverting

attention away rom the material inequalities experienced by manyliving in poverty, suggesting that the poor are to blame or their own

exclusion because o moral ailings and oering a one-dimensional

solution in a new version o the Protestant work ethic. In the context

o child and amily policy, and in particular the emphasis given to

parenting support as a means o overcoming disadvantage, the

discourse o social exclusion has been implicated in the promotion

o parenting norms that reect middle-class culture and identication

o the excluded poor as both victims and perpetrators o their own

exclusion (Gillies, 2005, p 87).

The concept o social exclusion was evident in French social policy

rather earlier than its adoption within the UK. An early denition

indicates why European states were concerned about social exclusion.

Politicians and policy makers were concerned not only about the

lie chances o those who become excluded, but also about the

consequences o this in creating divided and ragmented societies:

Social exclusion does not only mean insucient income. Iteven goes beyond participation in working lie; it is maniest

in elds such as housing, education, health and access to

services. It aects not only individuals who have suered


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7

Socialexclusion,childwelareandwell-being

serious set backs, but social groups, particularly in urban and

rural areas, who are subject to discrimination, segregation

or the weakening o traditional orms o social relations.

More generally by highlighting the aws in the social

abric, it suggests something more than social inequalityand, concomitantly, carries with it the risk o a dual or

ragmented society. (European Commission, 1993)

From this perspective, the objective o achieving the inclusion o

those who are segregated or discriminated against can be understood

as seeking to ensure that individuals can t in and thus do not pose

a risk to overall well-being. In particular, they are expected to take

hold o every opportunity to ensure their employability, which will

not only benet themselves and their amilies, but also help to ensure

social cohesion. This is the SID discourse identied by Levitas.

While critics such as Levitas highlighted the potential or social

inclusion policies to impose normative expectations about behaviours,

or to blame individuals or their own problems, the potential o the

social exclusion analysis was recognised by groups, such as people with

mental health problems, who experienced themselves as excluded, but

whose circumstances had not adequately been understood by reerence

solely to material inequalities. While many o those people with mentalhealth problems are poor, it is not only poverty that contributes to

the experience o exclusion. A key strength o the concept is that it

recognises the multidimensional nature o the experiences o those

living in poverty and o others at the margins o society. For example,

Berghman (1995, p 19) suggests that social exclusion should be

understood in terms o the ailure o one or more o the ollowing

systems:

the democratic and legal system, which promotes civic

integration;

the labour market , which promotes economic integration;

the welare state system, which promotes what may be called social

integration; and

the amily and community system, which promotes personal

integration.


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Lee and Murie (1999) suggest that at the core o the problem o social

exclusion is the lack o power o those who are excluded to participate

as citizens, and it is this that resonated with many o those who eel

themselves excluded rom participating within the societies o which

they are putative members (Barnes, 1997; Sayce, 2000). Identicationo the multiple dimensions o social exclusion has led to the listing

o groups who are, or are at risk o becoming, socially excluded.

These have included single mothers, young people who have been in

care, children in deprived households, disabled people unable to nd

employment, Travellers, reugees and asylum seekers and black people

subject to racism (OConnor and Lewis, 1999). Ward (2005) argues

that the concept o social exclusion is also helpul in understanding the

experience o lesbians, emphasising the signicance o non-material

as well as material dimensions o the experience o exclusion in this

context.

Berghmans (1995) notion o systemic ailures resulting in exclusions

highlights the other major strength o the concept o social exclusion.

When Townsend (1997) changed his mind about the value o a social

exclusion perspective (he had previously argued that it diverted

attention away rom deprivation) it was because it highlighted the

potential instruments o exclusion. Veit-Wilson (1998) distinguishes

between weak and strong versions o the concept by reerence to theextent to which attention is given to the processes by which people

become excluded:

In the weak version o this discourse, the solutions lie in

altering these excluded peoples handicapping characteristics

and enhancing their integration into dominant society.

Stronger orms o this discourse also emphasise the role

o those who are doing the excluding and thereore aim

or solutions which reduce the powers o exclusion. (Veit-

Wilson, 1998, p 45)

Social exclusion cannot be understood solely as an objective status; it

is also necessary to understand it as a dynamic process, although once

again this can lead to some rather dierent explanations. Byrne (1999,

p 9) suggests that one characteristic o the MUD perspective is that

it claims the poor do it to themselves and thus they are implicated

in the process o exclusion. But as Ward (2005) demonstrates in herstudy o lesbians experiences o exclusion, processes o sel-exclusion

(where these are appropriately described as such) are highly complex.

Ward identies the way in which lesbians decisions to exclude


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themselves not only reected negative discourses o lesbian identity

as abnormal or unacceptable, but also assessments o saety and risk,

which were inuenced by actors such as religion, cultural background

and proession.

Others have taken dierent perspectives on the dynamics o socialexclusion. Jordan (1996) argues that the processes o exclusion are

economic ones and suggests that there is a need or a theory o

groups that explains how individuals come together in dierent orms

o association to include some members or member benets and

consequently to exclude non-members rom such benets conceived

primarily in economic terms. Sibleys (1995) starting point is sociospatial

relations. He suggests that we should ask questions about who places

are or, whom they exclude and how prohibitions are maintained in

practice. This includes legal practices and the practices o social control

agencies, but also requires an account o barriers, prohibitions and

constraints on activities rom the point o view o the excluded (Sibley,

1995, p v). Sibley makes links between sociospatial structuring and

psychoanalytical theories o the sel and explores the dierent spatial

levels at which exclusion can be experienced: rom the home to the

nation state and beyond.

I, or example, we consider the question o residentialsegregation, which is one o the most widely investigated

issues in urban geography, it could be argued that the

resistance to a dierent sort o person moving into a

neighbourhood stems rom eelings o anxiety, nervousness

or ear. Who is elt to belong and not to belong contributes

in an important way to the shaping o social space. It is oten

the case that this kind o hostility to others is articulated

as a concern about property values but certain kinds

o dierence, as they are culturally constructed, trigger

anxieties and a wish on the part o those who eel threatened

to distance themselves rom others. This may, o course, have

economic consequences. (Sibley, 1995, p 3)

Analyses that emphasise the processual nature o social exclusion

highlight the dierent processes that are implicated and thus the

dierent dimensions o the experience o exclusion. We can suggest

that these dimensions o exclusion include (at least) the ollowing,which interact with each other in dierent ways to create multiaceted

experiences o exclusion or dierent social groups:


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material dimensions: exclusion rom material benets such as sucient

income, appropriate housing and physical environments (Jordan,

1996; Townsend, 1997);

spatial exclusions: restrictions on where people can live and on their

mobility within and between places (Sibley, 1995); access to goods and services: this can include both public and private

services. For example, people with mental health problems and

those living with HIV can be excluded rom nancial services such

as insurance, the design and criteria or access o welare services

can, in practice, exclude those in need o support and the nature o

proessional practices can sustain them and us discourses, which

urther contribute to the marginalisation o clients or users (Batsleer

and Humphries, 2000);

health and well-being: poor health is a consequence o material

deprivation, can contribute to increased poverty because o the

costs associated with illness and in its own right can be a source o

exclusion rom social participation (Purdy and Banks, 1999);

cultural: certain liestyles are regarded as irresponsible, immoral or

other. Fear o the other can lead people to exclude those regarded as

outsiders, whether that is a result o ethnicity, religion or psychiatric

diagnosis (Fernando, 1991; Lewis, 1994; Sibley, 1995);

sel-determination: certain social groups, such as children, people withlearning diculties and those regarded as mentally incapacitated,

can be considered incapable o (and in some cases legally excluded

rom) taking decisions about lie choices;

public decision making: in spite o the expansion o participatory

practices in public decision making, assumptions about appropriate

ways o taking part, the way in which participation orums are

designed and negative experiences o lack o change resulting rom

participation result in exclusions rom decision-making processes.

Understanding social exclusion as a process also opens up the possibility

o considering ways in which it can be resisted and the locations in which

resistance can occur. Power is exercised strategically at the macro level

and in interpersonal relations at the micro level. Macro-level dynamics

provide the social, political and economic bases o exclusion and set the

context within which micro-level negotiations and renegotiations take

place. At an intermediate level, social exclusion operates through social

policies that allow dierentiated access to services, through bureaucraticprocedures and practices that regulate entitlements in accordance with

set denitions, which may be exclusionary, and through proessionals

who act as gatekeepers to resources and decision-making structures.


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At the micro level, the processes o interaction between service users

and providers, and between people at risk o marginalisation and those

they encounter in their everyday lives, can either acilitate participation

or act as barriers to it. It is at this level that service users and others

who organise around shared experiences o exclusion or disadvantageoten take the initiative through either individual or collective action

in order to maximise their scope or manoeuvre and enlarge the

range o options open to them. It is also at this level that they begin

to challenge the way their social reality is constructed and resist orces

o exclusion. In so doing they begin to impact on the situation and

engage in redening the problem(s) to be addressed, speciying their

role within this process and developing alternative explanations and

solutions to what is on oer.

Thus, Jordan (1998) highlights the strategies o people living in

poverty who develop ways o improving the quality o their lie by

engaging in economic practices outside the mainstream. The disability

movement developed the social model o disability to account or the

marginalisation experienced by disabled people and used this to propose

undamentally dierent social policies designed to include rather than

exclude disabled people rom social participation (or example Priestley,

1999). From within black communities, one response to the impact o

racism on black childrens education has been to establish supplementaryschools that question assumptions about cultural decit within black

and minority ethnic communities (Reay and Mirza, 1997). And Anne

Power (2007) highlights the social capital that provides a resource or

those living in low-income neighbourhoods, which enables children

and their parents to survive in dicult circumstances. These resistances

point to the way in which policies may be redesigned to generate more

inclusionary outcomes that do not require an acceptance o dominant

norms o behaviour or practice. They also highlight the signicance o

collective action among marginalised or excluded groups in challenging

normative assumptions about the characteristic o the excluded.

C w w-bg t uK

In 2007, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) published a

report entitled Child Poverty in Perspective(UNICEF, 2007) that caused

consternation in the UK. In spite o an espoused commitment on

the part o New Labour to eradicate child poverty (see below), thisreport not only identied considerable remaining problems regarding

childrens material circumstances in the UK, but also painted a picture

o unhappiness and poor relationships that suggested that children in


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many less afuent countries are happier than their UK peers. In this

section we review evidence relating to the lives and circumstances o

children in the UK in the early 21st century.

At the start o the millennium, New Labour set a policy objective

o eradicating child poverty within 20 years. In order to assess progresstowards meeting the 2020 target, the government set interim targets

o a reduction o a quarter by 2004/05 and o a hal by 2010. Despite

a large reduction, o 600,000 ewer children in poverty, the rst target

was narrowly missed. While there was a reduction in the proportion

o children spending a large number o years (three or our) in poverty

down rom 17% in 1997-2000 to 13% in 2001-04 (DWP, 2006) this

still let 2.8 million children in relative poverty in 2004/05, and the most

recent data at the time o writing indicated a riseo 100,000 children

during 2005/06 (DWP, 2007a). Progress in reducing child poverty in

the UK also needs to be considered in the context o the UK having

had the worst rate in Europe at the time o the Prime Ministers pledge.

Changes that have taken place since then merely bring the UK closeto

the European average. Indeed, in 1999, child poverty in the UK was

higher than in nearly all other industrialised nations (DWP, 2007b).

Children had replaced older people as the group most likely to be in

poverty, as numbers doubled in the 20 years rom the 1970s (Hirsch,

2007). The UNICEF (2007) report conrms the low placing o theUK in relation to child welare in contrast to the European Union

and to the industrialised, developed, world. Although criticised at the

time o publication by the UK government as dependent on out-o-

date data and ignoring the progress made since 1999 (BBC, 2007),

the more recent data undermine this deence. While progress has been

made, there is much to do to alleviate child poverty and its negative

eects in the UK.

The UNICEF report made clear that child well-being cannot solely

be equated with material advantage and that child poverty is evident

in rich countries:

The true measure o a nations standing is how well it

attends to its children their health and saety, their material

security, their education and socialization, and their sense o

being loved, valued and included in the amilies and societies

into which they are born. (UNICEF, 2007, p 1)

The authors o the report emphasise the necessity to address the

multidimensional nature o childrens experiences and both the

objective and the subjective aspects o such experience in order to


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assess well-being. Tess Ridges (2002) study o what poverty and social

exclusion mean to children makes this clear. In order to understand

what poverty means to children in their everyday lives, Ridge

conducted interviews with disadvantaged children in both urban and

rural areas. She explored how poverty aected childrens capacitytot in with their peers, tojoin in socialactivities and the particular

importance o clothes as a key signier o peer inclusion. All these were

aected by poverty and constituted aspects o social exclusion that

impacted negatively on well-being. Her work highlights the impact

o poverty not only on childrens abilities to access material goods

that their peers take or granted, but also on young peoples abilities

to develop and maintain peer relationships. Poverty generates stigma

as well as limiting experience: Missing out on shared occasions did

not just mean shopping and leisure activities, but it also meant eeling

excluded rom the opportunity to meet up as a social group and to be

included in group experiences (Ridge, 2002, p 102).

Arguably, neither the moral underclass nor the social inclusion

discourse prioritises childrens subjective experiences o well-being in

comparison to their perormance as good citizens. But as the above

quote suggests, a ailure to encompass subjective eelings o inclusion

or exclusion will provide only a partial measure o how well states are

succeeding in ullling their responsibilities to their young citizens.The UNICEF (2007) report summarises the dimensions o well-

being and welare or children. The dimensions that are measured

are:

material well-being;

health and saety;

educational well-being;

amily and peer relationships;

behaviours and risks; and

subjective well-being.

The authors o the report emphasise both the interrelationship between

measures and the inadequacy o using economic poverty as the sole

measure o well-being. Their summary across six indicators o child

well-being placed the UK at the bottom o the 21 nations included

in their study.

The UK comes 18th out o the 21 countries on the material well-being measure. This includes indicators or relative income poverty,

workless households and reported deprivation. Countries higher up

the scale, or example the Czech Republic, have lower average incomes


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but a more equal distribution o income. The UK rates poorly or the

measures o relative poverty and workless households, but settles around

the midway point or the other measures.

Health and saety measures include inant mortality, low birthweights,

immunisations and accidental deaths. On these measures the UK isplaced 15th out o the 21 countries. The UK has a low placing or all

these measures apart rom accidental deaths, where it is placed second.

Without this high placing, the UK would be in a ar lower position

overall.

The components o the educational well-being measure are

achievement at age 15 in literacy and numeracy, as well as in science,

the percentage o those aged 15-19 in education, the percentage o

those aged 15-19 not in education, employment or training and the

percentage o those aged 15 who expect to be in low-skilled work.

The UK is below the Organisation or Economic Co-operation

and Development (OECD) average and is placed 17th out o the 21

countries overall. While levels o basic skills are high (the UK is placed

ninth), the UK scores poorly on other measures. The authors note that

a lack o available data prohibits a consideration o early years education

and o childcare provision.

The UK comes last in the measure o young peoples amily and

peer relationships. The components o this are amily structure, amilyrelationships and peer relationships (the last two measures being derived

rom survey results). The UK has high numbers o lone-parent amilies

(closely related to poverty; we return to this issue below) and although

the rank or relationships with parents is 12th, the UK is ranked last

or the percentage o 11- to 15-year-olds who nd their peers kind

and helpul (again, we return to this issue below).

The UK is also ranked last or the measure o harmul and risky

behaviours. This includes health behaviours such as healthy eating,

risk behaviours such as drinking and smoking and experience o

violence, ghting and bullying. The UK ranks low or health behaviours

(17th) but last or risk behaviours, with a high incidence o smoking,

drinking, drug taking and sexual activity. Only Portugal and Austria

had higher numbers o young people who had experienced violence

in the previous 12 months.

Surveys o children and young peoples opinions were used to assess

subjective well-being. Again, the UK is placed last on this measure,

which includes children and young peoples ratings o their own health,o their attitudes to school, and their sel-reported lie satisaction and

well-being. It is this nal measure where the UK is placed again at the

bottom o the OECD countries.


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The UNICEF (2007) report does not directly address the issue o

crime and its impact on the well-being o children and young people.

However, crime does impact on young people and the reduction

o crime was, as we will see, a sub-objective o the Childrens Fund.

Young people have increasingly been the subject o policy aiming toreduce crime and antisocial behaviour (Prior, 2005) but their increased

likelihood o being victims o crime over other groups is less well

recognised. The institutions and agencies o and around the criminal

justice system have been shown to ail to address their needs as victims

and witnesses (Mason et al, orthcoming). Crime itsel is concentrated

in particular areas and risk actors or involvement in crime include

the area where a young person lives as well as actors related to poverty,

with low income, poor housing and large amily size all key indicators

within the risk and protection ramework (Prior and Paris, 2005;

see also Chapter Three). In the most recently available analysis o the

British Crime Survey, young people (aged 10-15) were more than

twice as likely to have been the victim o crime as those aged 26-65;

the same analysis ound that young people who had committed an

oence were more likely to be victims themselves than other young

people (Wood, 2005).

Another theme to emerge rom Ridges (2002) work is the impact

o school and educational experiences on children and young peoplerom poor backgrounds. Poverty can mean that children are unable to

take part in school trips, and schools demands in relation to uniorms,

equipment and transport to out-o-hours activities eectively exclude

disadvantaged children rom important aspects o the educational

experience. Other aspects o the educational system can also contribute

to aspects o social exclusion. Ridge argues that the ocus on education

as a route to inclusion in adulthood has meant a ocus on achievement

within schools to the neglect o an understanding o education as a

means o developing social, emotional and ethical skills. This narrow

conceptualisation o education can itsel be regarded as exclusionary,

because it does not recognise the value o the dierent contributions

that dierent pupils may make.

More recent research (Wikeley et al, 2007) has conrmed the

impact o the lack o access to out-o-school activities or children

rom disadvantaged backgrounds. Based on interviews with 55 young

people, comparing the experiences o those rom amilies in poverty

with their more afuent peers, the study highlights how poor youngpeople participate in ewer organised out-o-school activities. The

authors describe the benets or young people who take part in such

activities, including broader peer networks, sel-condence and skills,


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but centrally a dierent attitude to learning as a result o developing

relationships outside o school. Young people rom poor backgrounds are

denied access to the learning that comes directly rom such activities and

also to the broader personal and interpersonal benets they generate.

The relationship between educational success and longer-term liechances has long been recognised. In their review o the governments

progress in reducing poverty and social exclusion, Palmer et al (2006)

highlight the centrality o education to the eradication o uture poverty,

and the need to raise the level o attainment or those young people

who are currently low educational achievers. They cite evidence that

has only recently become publicly available, which shows that in 2005,

70% o deprived 16-year-olds ailed to achieve ve or more General

Certicates o Education (GCSEs) at grade C or above, compared

to 45% o those who are not deprived. Two thirds o those who ail

to reach this standard at age 16 will ail to reach it by age 25. In his

review o progress towards the eradication o child poverty in 2020,

Hirsch (2006) argues that a ocus on education is essential i the target

is to be met as the current ocus on work will not deliver the drastic

changes required. In a separate publication, Hirsch (2007) reviews a

recent programme o research (commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree

Foundation: JRF) exploring the impact o poverty on education. The

research, which includes the study o out-o-school activities and theirimpacts outlined above (Wikeley et al, 2007), demonstrates how low

income is a strong predictor o low educational perormance. The eects

or poor children cannot be accounted or by school actors, that is, the

quality o the schools teaching and resources. Whatever these are, poor

children are more likely to do badly at school; those who do badly at

school are more likely to be unemployed or in low-paid work, and

thus be adults raising amilies in poverty. The evidence suggests that

education policy targeted at raising standards ails to address the needs

o disadvantaged children (Hirsch, 2007).

This analysis returns us to our starting point in this outline o child

welare in the UK. The government strategy to eradicate child poverty

has had at its centre: work and the reduction o workless amilies and

households. The strategy has our central dimensions:

work or those who can, and support in entering the labour

market;

nancial support or both amilies in work and amilies who areunable to work;

services to tackle disadvantage and risk; and

support or parents in their parenting (adapted rom DWP, 2006).


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Analysis by Hirsch (2006) or JRF and Harker (2006) or the

Department or Work and Pensions (DWP) highlights successes in

reducing workless households, in the tax credit system and in the

introduction o the National Minimum Wage in reducing the numbers

o children in poverty. Hirsch (2006, p 39) describes the reductionachieved as a historic reversal, but also discusses how those who remain

out o work and on the margins o the labour market will require much

more support than those who have already been helped. He also reveals

how the tax credit system is more likely to take a lone parent out o

poverty than a couple where only one person works. He argues that

while work is the best route out o poverty, this does not mean that

the solution to child poverty is or every parent to work. One reason

or this is the impact o low pay and low-skilled work, with the labour

market oering only limited opportunities to some; and the tax credits

or those in work are insucient to lit these amilies out o poverty.

This underlying problem o in-work poverty was also identied by

Palmer et al (2006) in their analysis o progress in reducing poverty and

social exclusion. In act, their analysis identied a risein the number

o children in working amilies who are in poverty or who would be

without tax credits. The government pledged to raise tax credits in

line with earnings rather than prices, ensuring that relative poverty is

addressed, but its own gures showed thatin the rst year (2003) ChildTax Credit was claimed by only 79% o those eligible (DWP, 2006). Itsanalysis did not reveal the characteristics o those who do not claim,

but we know rom other analyses o exclusion that they are likely to

be among the most vulnerable and excluded amilies.

Harker (2006) also argues that policy around work and the labour

market alone will ail to achieve the objective o reducing child poverty.

Focusing on amilies or whom extra support in accessing work and in

work-related benets is required, she suggests that Jobcentre Plus (the

DWPs local agencies responsible or supporting people in accessing

the labour market) should take more o a amily ocus, supporting

parents as parents so that they are able to work and ull the roles

and responsibilities associated with their amilies. As Harker points

out, hal o all children living in poverty live in working households.

The DWP has subsequently pledged to develop this amily approach

(DWP, 2007b).

Another perspective on this issue concerns the way in which policies

may impact more broadly on amily lie. An overemphasis on work asa route to social inclusion can ignore the way in which parents, and in

particular mothers, determine what is the right thing to do or their


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18


children and thus make dierent decisions about whether to take up

ull-time or part-time paid work, or to stay at home with their children.

In her summary o the Care Values and Future o Welare research

programme, Williams (2004) identies the way in which the values

within dierent social networks can inuence decisions about what isthe right thing to do or children. A key conclusion arising rom this

research is that policies should be designed to support the dierent

ways in which people seek to care or their children and that there is

a need to balance an ethic o work with an ethic o care. This reects

the identication within the UNICEF (2007) study o childrensexperiences within their amilies as a necessary aspect o their well-

being. Making time or parents to care or their children is as necessary

as ensuring sucient income and avoiding poverty.

The reductions in child poverty that the UK has seen since 1997

have not been equally distributed. Indeed, there were dierent starting

points or dierent groups and policy has targeted dierent groups in

dierent ways. One aspect o this concerns the geographical dimension

o poverty. Recent analysis has demonstrated that, while overall poverty

rates are alling, inequalities between geographical areas have increased

since 1970 (although changes since 2000 are less clear) (Dorling et al,

2007). Both poor and wealthy households have become increasingly

geographically segregated, with poverty clustering in urban areas.Thus, in light o the overall reductions in poverty outlined above,

disadvantaged communities remain and it is less clear how work-related

policy can impact on persistently poor groups. In London, poverty rose

between 1999 and 2005, but the quarter reduction target was met in

the regions o the North East, North West and South West. Poverty

reduced at a greater rate in Wales and Scotland than in England, where

there were much higher rates. The geographical concentration o

disadvantage has led to a number o area-based initiatives by the New

Labour government, such as Health Action Zones, Education Action

Zones and the New Deal or Communities.

Hirschs (2006) analysis reveals how the high incidence o lone

parenthood and its close relationship to poverty in the UK resulted in

the targeting o tax credits and increased state benets at this group;

as a result, the risk o a child in a lone-parent household being in

poverty reduced rom 61% to 48% rom 1999 to 2005. Hirsch also

identies how children in amilies with under-ves have beneted as

a result o the policy ocus on them. However, large amilies (our ormore children) have been identied as being particularly vulnerable to

poverty, something explored in more length by Bradshaw et al (2006).


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They point out that UK policy is not particularly sensitive to large

amilies needs. Although poverty in large amilies is alling as a result,

Bradshaw et al conclude, o tax credits, 50% o children in these amilies

are poor compared to 23% o single-child amilies.

In late 2007, a new Child Poverty Unit was established by theDWP and the Department or Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)

to explore how the child poverty target could be reached in light

o Harkers (2006) review in particular. The 2008 Budget (the most

recent at the time o writing) included an additional 1 billion or

measures to reduce child poverty, although JRF estimates that 4

billion is required (JRF, 2008) with little inormation available about

how measures beyond moving people into work might be identied

and implemented.

sc c ctt

One implication o the analysis o social exclusion discussed in the rst

part o this chapter is that we need to understand the experiences o

social exclusion in context and that such experiences will be dierent

or dierent groups o children. In this section we apply this analysis

o the dierent material, cultural and political dimensions o social

exclusion to the circumstances and experiences o our groups ochildren who were among those targeted or action by the Childrens

Fund because o concern that they are at particular risk o poor

outcomes in those areas that provided the ocus or Childrens Fund

activity: educational perormance and attendance, antisocial behaviour,

health and access to services. In a survey carried out by the National

Evaluation o the Childrens Fund (Edwards et al, 2006), 88.3% o

partnerships said that they targeted disabled children, 70.8% targeted

black and minority ethnic children, 47.5% targeted Gypsy/Traveller

children and 43.3% targeted reugee and asylum-seeking children, and

these our groups are the ocus o our analysis.

Material

The material dimensions o social exclusion relate both to income

poverty and the impact this has on amilies capacities to enable their

children to take part in activities and have access to material goods

that other children take or granted, and to the physical environmentsin which they live. There is little rm evidence about the extent o

poverty among Gypsy/Traveller amilies, but Niners (2005) study in


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one English region suggests that almost all residents on local authority

sites are in receipt o Housing Benet. Hirsh (2006) identies Gypsies/

Travellers as one group consistently at risk o poverty. Niners report

suggests that some amilies live in signicant poverty and parents

interviewed or NECF, particularly those with large amilies, citedlow income as key to their non-use o local leisure and recreational

acilities. This is particularly signicant in view o the poor quality o

the physical environment in which many o them live, and the absence

o sae space or play within caravans or on and around sites.

The material circumstances o amilies rom black and minority

ethnic groups vary widely, but those rom black and minority ethnic

backgrounds are more likely than the white population to be both poor

and living in deprived areas. More than 50% o Arican Caribbeans

and Aricans and over 33% o South Asians (the groups most likely

to be targeted by Childrens Fund services) live in districts with the

highest rates o unemployment (SEU, 2000). Children rom black and

minority ethnic groups are more likely to live in large amilies and thus

are overrepresented among those missing out because policy does not

adequately recognise the needs o large amilies. Indeed, one in ve

children in poverty is rom a black and minority ethnic group, with

rates or Black Arican, Pakistani and Bangladeshi children more than

double the rate or white children. Measures targeting lone parents areless relevant to these groups, and those addressing in-work poverty are

more relevant as nearly hal o Pakistani and Bangladeshi children live

in households with a single earner; current work-based policy is less

sensitive to the needs o these amilies than others (Harker, 2006).

Most reugees come rom the poorest countries o the world

(UNHCR, 2002) and within the UK the new areas to which reugees

and asylum seekers have been dispersed as a result o the 1999

Immigration and Asylum Act also tend to be characterised by poverty

and relatively high levels o crime and antisocial behaviour. They are

another group that Hirsh (2006) identies as experiencing ongoing

and persistent risks o poverty.

Material deprivation has a particular signicance or amilies with

disabled children. A majority o such amilies live in poverty or on

the margins o poverty (Gordon et al, 2000) and the costs o raising

a disabled child have been estimated at three times that associated

with raising a non-disabled child (Dobson and Middelton, 1998).

While amilies with disabled children are among those who havebeneted rom recent increases in nancial support, they remain

vulnerable to persistent poverty. Negotiating the benets system can

be time consuming and emotionally draining and this, combined with


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insucient understanding o the benets system on the part o service

providers, can mean that amilies do not receive the support to which

they are entitled. Disabled children oten live in houses that are not

adapted to their needs and this can have deleterious eects on their

health, and on both the mental and physical health o their parents(Clarke, 2006).

Spatial

Spatial exclusions aect the our groups dierently. Gypsies/Travellers

live on the margins, out o sight o most o the settled population in

places that have insucient value to be required or other purposes.

It can be argued that in this way the deviance o the Gypsy/Traveller

culture is less conspicuous (Sibley, 1995). While mobility between

areas may be high, it is usually mobility between marginalised spaces.

Mobility within the areas in which Gypsy/Traveller amilies settle

temporarily is mediated by gender and age while the men o the

amily may be out and about working, the women and children are

oten restricted to the site. Public transport acilities close to sites are

poor or non-existent and taxi drivers hired to take children to sports

and leisure centres by Childrens Fund project workers are sometimes

reluctant to do so (Mason et al, 2006).With regard to reugees and asylum seekers, compulsory dispersal

policies have resulted in asylum seekers being moved to areas o the

country with limited experiences o receiving immigrant groups

and this has limited asylum seekers abilities to draw on supportive

social networks (Woodhead, 2000; Sales, 2002). The bonding social

capital that is so important or marginalised groups is not available to

them (Beirens et al, 2007) and an enorced mobility results in spatial

exclusions in terms o both areas o residence and movement within

areas.

In contrast, many more established amilies rom black and minority

ethnic communities live in areas with a high density o people rom

the same or similar communities, in some places, or example within

areas in the West Midlands, constituting the majority population. This

can lead to a strong sense o inclusion within the ethnic community,

but a separation or segregation rom the white population.

Physical barriers constitute a major actor restricting disabled

childrens access and mobility between spaces. It was evident romsome o the data collected by NECF (Barnes et al, 2006a) that this

could impact on expectations about what was possible or example,

a decision not to pursue a project based around swimming because


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the local pool did not have acilities to make this accessible to disabled

people. Although some parents expressed preerences or their children

to attend a special school, one consequence o this was that it was

harder or children to take part in inclusive leisure activities because

o the travel time to school, riendship networks linked to school andlack o knowledge about community-based opportunities. Thus, not

only was there spatial segregation in education but this also impacted

on childrens relationships with their local neighbourhoods.

Accesstogoodsandservices

The Childrens Fund sub-objective o improving access to services

indicated that exclusion rom services was recognised as a signicant

element o the social exclusion experienced by children and their

amilies. But it is not only the specic design o individual services

that can result in exclusion, some public policies have such negative

impacts. For example, the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order

Act, which repealed much o the duty o local authorities to provide

and maintain sites or Gypsies and Travellers, has had a signicantimpact on relationships with the settled community. It has led to some

Gypsies/Travellers building on sites without planning permission with a

consequent increase in tensions in local relationships. Continual pressureon them to move on has disrupted contacts with schools and other

educational services and has aected both their physical and mental

health. Hester (2004) shows how mainstream services are designed

on the assumption o sedentary liestyles and that there has been an

historic reluctance on the part o public agencies to accept responsibility

or ensuring the basic necessities o a sae place to live, appropriate

education and health services or those who do not conorm to this way

o lie. In addition, some schools are reluctant to accept Gypsy/Traveller

children because o the anticipated impact on league table positioning,

some Gypsy/Traveller parents who were themselves bullied at school

are reluctant to expose their children to similar experiences, and a lack

o trusting relationships between Gypsy/Traveller parents and teachers

means that ears are hard to overcome (Kiddle, 1999).

Reugees and asylum seekers ace particular diculties in gaining

access to services that most people take or granted. Limited

interpretation services and inormation about eligibility mean that they

oten do not know about essential services and their rights to accessthem (Woodhead, 2000). Many mainstream services have poor levels

o awareness o young reugees and asylum seekers and their amilies

needs, priorities and concerns (Beirens et al, 2006). Mobility resulting


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rom dispersal and lack o knowledge o how things work can also

aect access to the education system. The ollowing have also been

identied: delays in accessing schools as a result o oversubscription;

schools reluctance to accept young reugees or asylum seekers; their

inability to oer appropriate support; and a belie that test perormancewould be adversely aected i they accept young reugees or asylum

seekers (Audit Commission, 2000; Hek, 2005). The experience o some

children in school is o limited understanding or capacity to respond

to the impact o the traumatic events, loss and bereavement that some

o them have aced (Beirens et al, 2006). Some children nd it dicult

to settle and their parents nd it hard to support them because o their

lack o understanding o the system and because o the challenges they

are acing in meeting their own needs.

Racism is implicated in the way in which social exclusion is

experienced by black and minority ethnic children and this is evidenced

in particular in their experience o schools and o education. The

rationale or many Childrens Fund projects supporting black and

minority ethnic children arose rom concerns that black and minority

ethnic pupils gain less benet than their white peers rom improvements

in educational attainment (OSTED, 1996; Warren and Gillborn, 2003).

There is growing evidence that school-based processes are an important

contributory actor in the production o poor outcomes or certainblack and minority ethnic pupils (DES, 2003a) and that practices such

as behaviour management can have discriminatory eects (Blair, 2001).

Black and minority ethnic pupils particularly Arican Caribbean

pupils are vastly overrepresented in school exclusion gures (SEU,

1998a) and the SEU (2000) acknowledges that racial discrimination

has a part to play in this. Black and minority ethnic children are also

overrepresented in interventionist social care provision (Thoburn et

al, 2004).

There are a number o actors that aect disabled childrens access to

services. Inadequate housing makes access to play and leisure acilities

particularly important or disabled children, but both physical and

attitudinal barriers impede access. Parents may be concerned about

injury, low income and the attitudes o non-disabled children and

adults, and these can act as barriers. Also, the inappropriate design o

play equipment and the physical environments in which it is based

act as a urther barrier. Youth and play workers are rarely trained to

support disabled children to make use o acilities that do exist. Inspite o an increasing emphasis on eective coordination between

service providers, amilies with disabled children oten nd themselves

having to coordinate the services they receive rom dierent providers.


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Experiences o insuciently integrated services relate to everyday

rustrations such as coordinating hospital appointments with school

timetables, and to more undamental dierences between agencies

over agreed denitions, which can lead to resistance to joint working.

These diculties are particularly signicant or amilies and childrenwith complex needs (Watson et al, 2002). Although there has been a

shit towards integrated schooling, education remains a site o dispute

and the experience o poor perormance in inclusive education has

prompted arguments to retain and halt the reduction o special schools.

Davis and Watson (2001) have identied the way in which discourses

around special educational needs and a reiteration o dierence

within school settings interact with structural and resource barriers to

continue to generate disabling practices.

Healthandwell-being

The consequences o many o these experiences o exclusion aect the

health and well-being o the our groups under analysis. For example,

Van Cleemput (2000) highlights the links between deprivation, poor

environments, lack o play acilities and poor health or Gypsy/Traveller

children. Overcrowding, poor-quality housing, material poverty, poor

diet and problematic access to health and social care services aect thephysical and mental health o reugees and asylum seekers.

Cultural

For groups whose ethnicity, race or liestyle places them outside

the majority culture, an important dimension o the exclusion they

experience relates to marginalisation, discrimination and stigmatisation.

Oicial recognition o the existence o institutional racism

(Macpherson 1999) problematises the notion that policy responses to

the experiences o black and minority ethnic children should be based

on assimilating black and minority ethnic communities into the white

host community. A similar point is made by Hester (2004) in relation

to Gypsies/Travellers. In both cases the concept o exclusion needs

to be understood with reerence to relationships with the majority

society and does not necessarily describe experiences o black and

minority ethnic or Gypsy/Traveller children in relation to their own

ethnic or cultural groups.Reugee and asylum-seeking children ace similar problems o

discrimination to other black and minority ethnic groups living in

the UK and some parents interviewed or NECF reported being


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unwilling to let their children play outside because o the danger o

harassment.

Gypsies/Travellers have been subject to persecution on racial grounds

and on the basis o their liestyles. Many travelling amilies have a

strong cultural identity, but this can also place children apart rom theirpeers because o the expectations about, or example, the role o girl

children within the amily and the acceptability o riendships with

non-travelling children. Parents sometimes try to protect their children

rom bullying by maintaining their separation rom mainstream

society. Van Cleemputs (2000, cited in Hester, 2004) observation

that the discrimination experienced by Gypsies/Travellers would

not be tolerated i applied to black or other minority ethnic groups

indicates the depth o the distaste within the settled community or the

Gypsy/Traveller liestyle. Many o the groups that constitute Gypsies/

Travellers are outside the putative protection o anti-discriminatory

legislation because they are not considered to have a distinct ethnic

identity. Research has shown how those who do come within the terms

o this legislation English Gypsies and Irish Travellers continue

to ace open hostility and discrimination. Sibley (1995) identies the

way in which stereotypes contribute to the processes by which these

groups are pushed to the margins o society.

Hester (2004) argues that the dominant objective o recent policyhas been that o assimilation persuading, encouraging or coercing

Gypsies/Travellers to give up their deviant culture and adopt a more

acceptable, sedentary liestyle. Gypsies/Travellers who make the decision

to pursue their own way o lie are exercising a sel-determination that

sustains a collective identity necessary to resist the impact o the many

exclusionary processes we have identied. From the perspective o the

settled community and many mainstream services, this resistance can

also be seen to contribute to sel-exclusion and this aected the design

o some Childrens Fund services that were intended to encourage

engagement with mainstream activities.

Sel-determinationanddecisionmaking

All children are subject to others making decisions on their behal

in important areas o their lives, such as which school to attend and

whether or not to receive medical treatment, and by virtue o their age

are not allowed to take part in certain activities, such as sexual activityor drinking alcohol. Although the age o criminal responsibility is lower

in England than in many other European countries (10 in comparison

with, or example, 14 in Germany, 16 in Spain and 18 in Belgium), the


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majority o the children within the remit o the Childrens Fund are

considered not to be responsible or actions that would be regarded in

adults as criminal behaviour.

Nevertheless, the emphasis on childrens participation within the

Childrens Fund and other recent policy initiatives is evidence thatenabling children to be more active participants in taking decisions

about matters that aect their lives is seen as one way o reducing social

exclusion (NECF, 2004). Thus, the Children and Young Peoples Unit

identied children and young peoples participation as part o its core

strategy as a cross-departmental unit: The Government wants children

and young people to have more opportunities to get involved in the

design, provision and evaluation o policies and services that aect

them or which they use (CYPU, 2001a).

The United Nations Convention on the Rights o the Child

recognises that children have a right to be included in decisions about

matters that aect them although it also acknowledges that children

may be vulnerable and thereore also have a right to be protected. This

recognition o vulnerability applies particularly to children dened as

having special needs, but also applies to, or example, reugee children

(particularly those who are unaccompanied) who are both vulnerable

and subject to other peoples decisions about where they can live and

indeed whether they can remain in the country.

Cc

This discussion reveals the complexity o the processes involved in social

exclusion and the inadequacy o theories o social exclusion based in

the identication o individual or group risk actors. It also alerts us to

the way in which policies and services can contribute to processes o

exclusion not only in terms o service design, but also in the cultural

assumptions they make and in the extent to which they enable users

or potential users to inuence the nature o the help they receive.

This is an important starting point or an analysis o policies intended

to improve child welare and well-being and, more specically, policies

that adopt social inclusion as an objective. It demonstrates the nature

and extent o the challenge to be aced to respond to the multiaceted

processes o exclusion. But social exclusion is only one concept that

is relevant to an understanding o such policies and the practices theygenerate. In Chapter Three we move on to consider notions o risk and

protection, and the way in which the amily in general and parenting


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in particular have been co-opted as means towards the delivery o

policy objectives.


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three

Ctpy

pvttv c w

itct

Social exclusion is a comparatively recent way o understanding

the needs and experiences o children who are in various ways

disadvantaged and, as we have seen, it is a perspective that has generated

considerable controversy. However, the history o child and amily

policies demonstrates that controversy about the basis on which

interventions and support should be provided is not new and has

accompanied most attempts to develop policy and practice concerned

with childrens welare and well-being. Given the inherent tensions

between public matters and private lives, policy and practice responses

to the needs o children and amilies have inevitably drawn on contested

understandings o what constitutes eective interventions and desiredoutcomes. Childrearing and amily lie provoke considerable political

and practice debate and preventative approaches within this context

reect the broader social policy tensions and competing discourses

about state intervention in child and amily lie.

Historically, child welare provision has, according to Fox-Harding

(1997), been set within an analysis o the unctions o the state

when intervening in private amily lie. Fox-Hardings analysis was

concerned with the values accorded by state policy to amily lie and

to childrearing capacity and the possible benets o a range o social

policy interventions. She suggested that childcare policies could be

located within our possible perspectives each reecting a dierent

set o values about the benets and rights to state intervention in

amily lie to promote childrearing. More recent academic analysis

addresses the changing policy landscape and the emerging emphasis

on longer-term economic and social outcomes or children. Social

policy analysts have argued that the location o child welare policies

within an analysis o social exclusion represents a shit towards thetheoretical ramework o the social investment state (Fawcett et al,

2004). Featherstone (2006) argued that this theoretical ramework

brings together social and economic projects concerned with the


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aims o economic viability and productivity. Useully, Fawcett et al

(2004) took the analysis o the social investment state developed by

authors such as Giddens (1998) and Lister (2003) and explored how

this is applied to children and to childhood. They suggested that there

a number o dimensions to this:

the development o strategies that are holistic, but also targeted;

understandings o children as investments or the uture rather than

simply a concentration on current-well being;

the orming o an alliance with parents (through mechanisms o

support and control) to take orward the investment strategies;

and

a limited recognition o children as subjects in their own right,

resulting in the emergence o ad hoc approaches to childrens rights

(Fawcett et al, 2004, p 4).

This analysis is a useul backdrop or understanding policy developments,

specically the changes in the paradigms o risk and protection and

the discourses surrounding parenting and policy approaches that have

started to emerge post Childrens Fund or amilies at severe risk o

exclusionary processes and poor outcomes.

rk ptct c v

The location o child welare policies in a context o social exclusion

has brought with it a political process o analysis to identiy those

deemed to be at risk o poor outcomes and thereore in need o early

intervention and support to promote protective actors. Prevention has

increasingly become linked to macro and micro understandings o risk

and protective actors in relation to social exclusion. The New Labour

development o generic child welare strategies and specic national

programmes concerned with attainment and well-being or all children

(such as the Every Child Matters agenda discussed in Chapter Four)

has encompassed responses or children who are particularly at risk o

exclusionary processes and poor outcomes because o where they live,

their amily environment or their own capacities. These children are

seen to present real challenges to the political aspirations or socially and

economically viable citizens, and as such, additional interventions have

been proposed as necessary to ensure that the investment in childhooddoes deliver later benets. For New Labour, the response to these at

risk children has repeatedly emphasised early interventions in amily

lie through enhanced education and health provision.


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Contemporaryissuesorpreventativechildwelare

As Chapter Two has described, childrens pathways in and out o

social exclusion are multiarious. However, New Labour has sought to

identiy those seen to be at most risk o poor outcomes and to target

early interventions accordingly. This process o targeting reects a policy

assumption that early intervention in the lives o those displaying orexperiencing certain conditions reduces the possibility o later, poor

outcomes. Data about the impact o such approaches suggest a complex

picture o inputs and outcomes. As France and Utting (2005) suggest,

evidence supporting the paradigm o risk-ocused prevention in

child welare remains underdeveloped: Proponents o the paradigm

acknowledge that there is much still to be learned about the inuence

o individual risk actors, including their salience at dierent stages in

childrens lives, and the ways that they interact and contribute to poor

outcomes (France and Utting, 2005, p 79).

The growing body o research about the impact o a range o variables

on childrens current and later perormance presents a complex picture.

The rat o preventative programmes launched by New Labour used

varying analyses o risk and protective actors and, while these may

or may not have been complimentary, they were all set within the

paradigm described by France and Utting. Alongside this development

o policy and programmes was research that demonstrated an uneven

impact on outcomes or children rom early intervention initiatives.Research nationally in the UK (National Evaluation o Sure Start,

Research Team, 2005; Edwards et al, 2006) and internationally (see, or

example, reports rom the Canadian programme Better Beginnings,

Better Futures, http://bbb.queensu.ca/pub.html) suggested that those

children who ace the most dicult and enduring diculties were

the least responsive to the preventative programmes being developed.

Despite this complex and uneven picture, early intervention/prevention

policy developments have continued to secure considerable political

commitment and have led to a signicant shit in the context within

which activity to enhance child welare is being pursued.

The emphasis by New Labour on risk in relation to social exclusion

and poor later outcomes, rather than risk as the assessment o the

likelihood o a child suering signicant harm, created the opportunity

or a new set o policy discourses to emerge about children and their

amilies. Prior to the changes in the policy context or prevention,

much o the debate about risk ocused on either a orensic discourse

concerned with investigation, assessment and treatment, or debatesabout how to address child and amily support needs while responding

to the pressing service demands o child protection. As Little et al (2003,

p 209) noted, It is common to talk about a child being at risk....


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This generally reers to a child who has been or is more likely than

others to be maltreated.

Since 2003, the mainstream understandings o at risk have started

to change. The risks articulated in contemporary policy are those

concerned with children experiencing poor educational attainment,reduced social contribution, poor health and antisocial behaviour.

As we have seen, these risks are seen to be experienced not only

by children themselves, but as negative consequences or society as

a whole.

The groups o children that historically have been the primary

ocus o state policies and practices such as children in the public

care system are now included within the wider assault on actors

that undermine child well-being and impede positive outcomes. The

Every Child Matters: Change or Children (DES, 2004a) policies set out

core outcomes or children irrespective o their individual histories and

circumstances. The relevance and useulness o these outcomes or all

children have been questioned:

Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) is the campaign

to get rights and justice or every disabled child. Disabled

children, young people and their amilies have been let

out or too long. EDCM is the campaign to put thisright. We want all disabled children and their amilies

to have the right to the services and support they need

to live ordinary lives. (EDCM website: www.edcm.org.

uk/Page.asp?originx_157qn_74514704196194n42n_

2006911575g)

The children who were the subject o state concern are overrepresented

in the groups experiencing poor outcomes and so the generic policies

can be seen to be increasingly honed down to address specic groups.

The argument here was that the generic outcomes agenda may not

adequately reect the needs o disabled children, and evidence elsewhere

suggests that other groups such as black and minority ethnic children

may also nd the Every Child Matters outcomes wanting (Morris et

al, 2006). Likewise, the specic and additional needs o young people

within the care system were seen to merit particular attention through

developments such as the Care Matters proposals (DCSF, 2007). This

reects the analysis by Fawcett et al (2004) o a move towards policy


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Contemporaryissuesorpreventativechildwelare

concerned with the needs o all children and the whole child, but within

this, some groups receive particular attention: this approach does render

certain groups o children and young people more visible, as recipients

o both support and control strategies (Fawcett et al, 2004, p 5).

This attempt within policy to respond holistically to the experienceso children also enabled expectations (moral and political) to be placed

on all children and their amilies. Such expectations were seen as

key to the promotion o protective actors. As with concepts o risk,

concepts o protection also changed. A similar political and policy

process occurred: past protective rameworks ocused on individual

needs in relation to saety and harm reduction; in contrast, current

policy discourses emphasised protection through universal experiences

o educational attainment, positive experiences o citizenship and robust

networks o support and control. The previous context or child welare

was argued to be risk ocused, paying little attention to strength-based

models o practice (Parton 1997). Similarly, the current context could

also be seen to be preoccupied with a dierent kind o risk:

Protection in this context is dened as something other

than the opposite o risk. It reers, specically, to actors

that have been consistently associated with good outcomes

or children growing up in circumstances where they are,otherwise, heavily exposed to risk. Less evidence is available

about protection and its workings than about risk. (France

and Utting, 2005, p 78)

For child welare practitioners this introduction o new conceptual

rameworks or risk, and to a lesser extent protection, created a series

o tensions between historical responsibilities or children who may

suer signicant harm, and new expectations or holistic responses

to children and their amilies. The discourses o risk and protection

were changing, and with this came new expectations and demands

or proessionals. Central to this was the legal and policy ramework

o the 2004 Children Act, which made explicit the expect

Children and Social Exclusion

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