What’s wrong with welfare reform

presentation to bishops’ spouses

Clare JonesWomenCentre Calderdale & Kirklees

Simon DuffyThe Centre for Welfare Reform

Presentation to bishops’ spousesBishopthorpe Palace Bishopthorpe York15 April 2015

Picture of Christ with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Jean Vanier notes that in the language of today Lazarus would probably be described as having a disability. He was supported by his two unmarried sisters. All three were clearly very close to Jesus and at the heart of Christ’s mission on earth.

What’s wrong with welfare reform

Social justice is at the heart of the Christian faith

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God • Do not steal • Do not lie • Do not deceive one another • Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord • Do not defraud your neighbour or rob him • Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight • Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling-block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord • Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly • Do not go about spreading slander among your people • Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour's life. I am the Lord • Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbour frankly so that you will not share in his guilt • Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord • Keep my decrees • Leviticus 19:9-18

1. Welfare reform in reality - the current attack on the welfare state - Simon

2. The missed opportunity - the example of WomenCentre - Clare

3. Re-thinking welfare - positive possibilities - Simon

Welfare reform: the attack on the

welfare state

Welfare reform in reality

In 2010 a new coalition Government began a series of ‘reforms’ to the welfare state, building on the work of the previous Labour Government, but rapidly accelerating the pace of ‘reform’.

• Radical reduction in size of Government spending

• Radical reduction in the value of ‘benefits’

• Increased penalties for those out of work

• Increased shame and stigma for those out of work

The dominant hypothesis seems to be that excessive public spending and a culture of laziness or welfare dependency has radically undermined our society and our public finances. However…

They use lies and vicious rhetoric, while dreaming up more schemes to defraud the poor; while all the time the poor just cry out for justice • Isaiah 32:7

An alternative hypothesis is that we have slipped into some bad habits of thought and accepted some false or misleading information as facts. Much of this has happened because we have taken the welfare state for granted and conceptualised it in the wrong way.

WomenCentre:holistic and community-

based approach

The missed opportunity

Our mission is to improve the quality of life for women.

Our vision is to provide a holistic, one-stop shop service, that combines centre-based and community-based services, focused on meeting the needs, aspirations and desires of women in order to help them have an improved quality of life.

Women-centred and holistic approach

• Information, advice, signposting and referrals

• Domestic violence support and interventions

• Counselling and therapy

• Learning and skills opportunities

• Women offender services

• Volunteering and mentoring training and opportunities

• Access to community psychiatric nurse services and community mental health teams

• Housing advice and support

• Girls’ resilience work

• Finance, benefits and debt advice

• Emotional support and solution focused interventions

• Specialist Midwives: DV, Young persons, Substance Misuse

• Asylum seeker and refugee advocacy and support

Managing a serious health condition 64%

Finding a safer place to live 27%

Living with childhood abuse 51%

Didn’t finish their education 76%Recent experience of domestic violence 85%

Fractured family (for those with young families) 66%

Children have experienced abuse (for those with children) 55%

Living with a severe level of mental illness 55%

Living with some mental illness 91%

History of drug or alcohol misuse 52%

Victim of crime 41%

Perpetrator of crimes 39%

Worried by debt or lack of money 65%

Sample of 44 women working with WomenCentre:

the multiple and reinforcing erosion of personal resilience

Our hypothesis: complex needs are not really so complicated

Marie• Marie was sexually abused by her stepfather and spent time in and out of local

authority care as a young child.

• Marie self harms significantly. She has complex health problems: diabetes, hepatitis C, depression, mood disorders, drink and alcohol induced psychosis.

• Marie’s own two children are in care.

• Marie is in a deeply abusive relationship and is regularly assaulted by her partner.

• Marie has committed benefit fraud and assault against a police officer and has a community sentence which she struggles to comply with because of her chaotic lifestyle.

• Marie has deep distrust of statutory agencies and has actively avoided engagement.

• Marie is one of many women who have or are being supported through WomenCentre.

Kath• Kath’s mental health deteriorated rapidly after Carrie was taken into local

authority care. She maintained contact with Carrie apart from the periods she was treated as an in- patient of the local mental health hospital. Kath is currently accessing support via a self help group for women who have experienced their children being taken into care.

• Dave left Kath in 2006 and moved in with a new partner at the same time. His new partner is 34 and has a 9 year old daughter and an 11 year old son from a previous relationship.

• There have been 59 reported incidents of domestic violence since 2007 and the two children are currently subject to a child protection plan.

• They were not previously known to social services.

• The 11 year old boy confided to a social worker that unless someone helped his mum he would have to kill Dave as it was the only way he could imagine the abuse ever stopping. He said that he would wait until Dave was asleep and then stab him.

1. Start with the whole woman - gendered and holistic

2. Offer a positive and comprehensive model of support - every woman is a one-stop-shop

3. Build a bond of trust - create the means for woman to do real work together

4. Be a new kind of community - of women, working together, to improve lives and communities.

WomenCentre’s response to complexity

“Working with women”

changed behaviour [for women offenders] 100%

better able to manage relationships [victims of domestic violence] 78%

need to use drugs & alcohol reduced 73%

health improved 95%

management of health improved 89%

felt better 93%

had improved education 40%

managing money better 51%

found a new place to live 29%

housing had improved 50%

helped to feel safer at home 64%

children were safer [where abuse suspected] 43%

feel safer in their neighbourhood 53%

• 86% of women felt more positive about their own future. 93% said WomenCentre had helped them with their attitude to their future. 74% of women said they felt their life was worthwhile, while 72% said they had positive dreams for the future, these included:

• 68% wanted to be a good mother

• 68% wanted to be a good friend

• 46% wanted to be a helpful neighbour

• 55% wanted to help in the community as a volunteer

• 6% wanted to play a bigger role in their faith community

• 42% wanted to be a good employee

• 24% wanted to run their own business

Transformational impact

Re-thinking welfare: positive possibilities

Future possibilities

New thinking about the welfare state requires us to ask the right questions in the right way. In particular we need to stop seeing the welfare state as a gift from the powerful to the weak.

All groups, all societies, are built on the model of a pyramid: at the top are the powerful, the rich, the intelligent. They are called to govern and guide. At the bottom are the immigrants, the slaves, the servants, people who are out of work, or who have a mental illness or different forms of disabilities. They are excluded, marginalised. Here, Jesus is taking the place of a person at the bottom, [John 13] the last place, the place of a slave. For Peter this is impossible. Little does he realise that Jesus came to transform the model of society from a pyramid to a body, where each and every person has a place, whatever their abilities or disabilities, where each one is dependent on the other. Each is called to fulfil a mission in the body of humanity and of the Church. There is no "last place.”

Jean Vanier on Jesus washing the feet of his disciples

• Justice rather than stigma • Capacity rather than need • Power rather than control

If the present order is taken for granted or assumed to be sacrosanct, charity from the more to the less fortunate would seem virtuous and commendable; to those for whom the order itself is suspect or worse, such charity is blood-money. Why should some be in the position to dispense and others to need that kind of charity?

An infidel could ignore that challenge; for apart from faith in God there is really nothing to be said for the notion of human equality. Men do not seem to be equal in any respect, if we judge by available evidence. But if all are are children of one Father, then all are equal heirs of a status in comparison with which apparent differences of quality and capacity are unimportant; in the deepest and most important of all - their relationship to God - all are equal…

It is axiomatic that Love should be the predominant Christian impulse, and that the primary form of love in social organisation is Justice.

William Temple, Archbishop of York, then Canterbury, one of the founding fathers of the welfare state

The Centre for Welfare Reform www.centreforwelfarereform.org simon@centreforwelfarereform.org @CforWR

WomenCentre www.womencentre.org.uk clare.jones@womencentre.org.uk @womencentred