The
systematic information-seeking exercise that is the subject of this
report was funded by the European Union and coordinated by Home-Start
International. The work involved independent researchers in Greece
for the National Organisation for Social Care, in the Netherlands
for Humanitas (a large NGO), in the Republic of Ireland for Home-Start
Ireland and in the United Kingdom for Home-Start UK.
The
partners aimed to raise awareness amongst policy makers and practitioners
throughout the European Union of the ways social exclusion affects
families with young children, to highlight gaps in knowledge and
areas where further in-depth research is needed as well as to identify
positive strategies of intervention.
Emphasis
on families with young children stemmed from the strength of the
evidence that what happens in the early years is of crucial importance
for later individual fulfilment. Early intervention can also prevent
the cost of social disadvantage and exclusion being passed on from
one generation to the next. That the evidence is widely recognized
in the United Kingdom is manifest in the substantial Government
commitment of resources to Sure Start. The same cannot be said of
all EU countries.
You
may be wondering why funding was channelled through Home-Start International,
a voluntary organization, and not a purely academic base. One reason
is the growing recognition at EU level of the insights and contribution
of NGOs to welfare issues. The strengthening of links between government,
professionals and voluntary organizations is of vital importance
in combating social exclusion. Home-Start is well placed to develop
such links. It has contacts throughout the European Union. Its staff
and volunteers work with professionals, and every day its volunteers
work alongside vulnerable families. This direct but low profile
access to families puts Home-Start in a strong position to talk
about what it is like to face social exclusion and to identify what
helps young families move out of it.
Our
book provides a comprehensive account of the partners’ deliberations
and joint findings, and I hope you will read it at your leisure.
What I propose to do in this article is to touch on some of the
points with particular reference to the United Kingdom.
The
first task for all the researchers was to find out how social exclusion
is understood and defined. In addition to a study of the literature,
researchers talked to representatives of national and local government,
of voluntary organizations, and to academics, to practitioners and
to families themselves. Our methodology reflected the need to develop
that crucial link between government, professionals, voluntary organizations
and families. It was a Reality Check to see whether there was agreement
at all levels about what had to be tackled and how to measure it.
This
Reality Check revealed a striking mismatch in some potentially important
respects. In the United Kingdom, the message from Government was
clear: Social exclusion is a multi-dimensional concept and a dynamic
process. It is characterized by an accumulation of disadvantage
or risk factors, but lack of financial resources is seen as the
crucial problem. Consequently priority is given to addressing issues
of unemployment and low income and focusing on particularly vulnerable
groups.
Relevant to our investigation is that these groups include teenage
mothers and young families in highly deprived areas. Sure Start,
with its massive injection of government money, was just getting
under way at the time of our inquiry.
But
the emphasis changed nearer the grass roots among representatives
of voluntary organizations and practitioners. Respondents acknowledged
the importance of low income and unemployment, but – for young
families - social isolation in all its manifestations tended to
take centre stage. Strong and consistent views were expressed that
social isolation touches all socially excluded people, regardless
of the reason for their social exclusion.
Among
the factors that can bring about social exclusion in young families
that are not necessarily on low incomes are disabilities, multiple
births, mental health problems in the family, intolerance or where
early experience (such as feeling a failure at school) has undermined
parents’ confidence or alienated them from society.
As
for families themselves, responses centred not so much on money
but rather on lack of respect, stigma, indignity, feelings of isolation
and powerlessness, and on distrust of those seen as in authority.
Social exclusion had to do with how parents were made to feel, -
suggesting the importance of how policies are implemented.
The second stage of the inquiry focused on a similar Reality Check
on indicators and measurement of social exclusion in families with
young children as well as a survey of available statistics on families
with young children.
This
produced some thought-provoking facts. Although data are available
for several hard indicators, it is almost impossible to gain an
accurate picture of the number of socially excluded families with
young children because household data are not disaggregated by age
to enable identification of families with pre-school age children.
‘Children’ usually means anyone aged 16 and under. Further,
few data of social lives are collected and organized in such a way
as to show accumulation of risk factors or tabulated in such a way
as to set perceptions against more objective measures. The cost
of accessing some promising data sets for research purposes is prohibitively
high.
In
consequence, it is very easy, statistically speaking, for families
with young children to fall below the horizon of those who seek
to promote their social inclusion. It seriously hampers project
evaluation in terms of social exclusion.
Turning
to the Reality Check on dimensions and indicators, a model of the
dimensions of social exclusion developed by the Centre for the Analysis
of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics served as
the basis for interviews. It defines social exclusion as ‘non-participation
in the normal activities of citizens living in a given community’
and includes five dimensions with possible indicators as relevant
to social exclusion. The five dimensions are: consumption (low income);
savings (having a bank account and assets such as a house); production
(employment, training, caring); political activity (voting or membership
of community organizations) and social networks.
The
question was: - are these dimensions adequate to identify social
exclusion in families with young children?
Again
differing viewpoints emerged. Political activity was generally dismissed,
in England because public apathy was so widespread, and in Northern
Ireland, because of exactly the opposite.
Savings
too were not generally seen as a good identifier of socially excluded
young families.
Of the three remaining dimensions, at Government /policy maker level,
acceptable dimensions for measurement were hard – income and
employment. Social isolation, although of possible relevance, was
dismissed as too subjective.
In
contrast, most representatives of voluntary organizations and practitioners
acknowledged the importance of low income and lack of employment,
but insisted on social isolation as a measure of social exclusion
because “it touches all socially excluded people regardless
of the reason they are socially excluded”.
It
is worth noting that practitioners in the UK also voiced misgivings
about some of the suggested hard measures. They considered them
potentially misleading. This is where their understanding of what
life is like for many vulnerable mothers and children is so important.
Equivalence of household income is one example. In their experience,
it should not be taken for granted that household income is shared
equally. Mother and child(ren) do not necessarily benefit in equal
measure from money coming in.
There
was also disagreement, on the basis of their observations, with
the assumption that reconciliation of work and family is the only
issue. While paid employment is an answer for many low income mothers,
some of the most vulnerable may simply be placed under undue strain
by work. This strategy can be counter-productive for both mothers
and children..
In
interviews with families, we used a schedule, a list of 24 aspects
of life that one has or can have. They cover all five dimensions
of activity in the original model. Families were invited to rate
them as ‘very important’, ‘not so important’
or ‘not at all important’.
The factors rated most important were :
1 (joint)
• Be treated with respect
• Live with hope
• Have health and strength
• Have one special person in one’s life
2
• Live in a home that meets our needs
3
• Live where children can play safely
4 (joint)
• Have a social life
• Have public services nearby.
‘Have
a job that I enjoy’ came tenth, and fourteenth was ‘Have
a job, even if it doesn’t pay well and I don’t enjoy
it’.
In
discussion, some mothers also volunteered that mothers who had more
money than they had could still be on the outside looking in. Examples
were mothers with toddlers, mothers with children with special needs
or those who were too frightened to go out of their homes.
So
again we found a striking mismatch in views between policy makers
and those at grass roots level, and a similar pattern of responses.
The finding brings to mind the story of the six blind men who were
asked to describe an elephant. They stood around a suitably placid
animal – and felt what was within their reach. One described
the tail, another the trunk, a tusk, a leg and so on. Each one,
as they understood it, was describing an elephant.
In
using this analogy, I am not suggesting that our respondents were
blind, simply that we are all to some extent blinkered when it comes
to understanding the elephantine proportions of social exclusion.
But
if we are concerned to measure it in relation to families with young
children, and if we leave any dimension (or vital organ) out of
account, especially one that is as important as social isolation
appears to be to those at the sharp end, we run the risk of leaving
a crucial dimension out of the reckoning – simply because
it is difficult to measure. By limiting measurement to the use of
comparatively hard, robust indicators, perhaps we are measuring
poverty – with all the technical pitfalls that holds –
rather than the broader concept of social exclusion.
One
challenge, certainly at local and regional levels, is to develop
evaluation designs that will test how far policies and programmes
for families with young children succeed in promoting social inclusion.
Unlike most existing evaluations, these need explicitly to evaluate
those factors that encompass the relationship between services and
their impact on the child and its parents; and also their impact
on the interaction between the family and the wider community.
It
is a challenge that we, as a team, hope to meet next.
Dr Sheila Shinman is an Associate Lecturer in the Department
of Health and Social Care at Brunel University, and is Research
Adviser to Home-Start International UK. She has a particular interest
in the development and evaluation of acceptableand
effective support for hard-to-reach families.
Home Start International is near Oxford Circus - 2nd. floor, 6 Market
Place, London W1W 8AF. Tel 0207 631 4358.
