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This publication details progress in tackling poverty and
social exclusion over the last decade, as well as the progress
already made on the commitments in the Social Exclusion Action
Plan published in September 2006. The Action Plan covered:
nurse family partnership pilots aiming to tackle exclusion
in the early years of life; multi-systemic therapy pilots
providing support to young adults with complex needs; and
pilots targeting improved service provision to adults facing
chronic exclusion.
The next steps for the Social Exclusion Task Force will be:
families at risk review and performance management - considering
how a cross-government Public Service Agreement (PSA) could
help excluded adults and families.
For more information, visit www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
As part of the lead-in to the next Comprehensive Spending
Review, the Treasury (with DfES) is carrying out reviews of
critical areas. In the 2005 report, Support for parents,
they identified the progress that has been made in improving
outcomes for children and young people, but at the same time,
also identified that more needed to be done (to deal with
poverty, educational attainment, obesity, for example). Support
for parents found that the key factors that are particularly
influential on children's outcomes are: family prosperity;
parenting; the wider community; and services.
In the Budget 2006, it was announced that the 2007 Comprehensive
Spending Review would be informed by a series of policy reviews,
one of which was a review of children and young people, building
on the Government's strategy to improve their outcomes. Following
consultations in autumn 2006, the Treasury and DfES have pulled
together the key evidence into this policy paper through which
the review will continue to focus specifically on:
- fulfilling the potential of all children
- young people - particularly a 10 year strategy for youth
services
- vulnerable groups (disabled children and families caught
in a cycle of low achievement).
The final report of the review is expected in Spring 2007.
Further information about the Children and Young People Review
can be found at: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spending_review/spend_csr07/reviews/cyp_review/cypreview_index.cfm
Support for parents: the best start for children.
HM Treasury, 2005 (ISBN-10: 1-84532-125-1) is available to
download from: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/F58/FF/pbr05_supportparents_391.pdf
(The Network Newsletter, February 2007)
The government's nine-year-old social exclusion unit is to
be shut and its work transferred to a smaller taskforce in
the Cabinet Office responsible for trying to persuade Whitehall
departments to focus on the most severely excluded. The new
unit will also focus on preventitive work among the most hard
to reach children and families deemed to have been immune
to much of the government's previous social exclusion drives.
The social exclusion unit is currently part of the new Department
of Communities and Local Government. Critics claim its reports
have had increasingly limited impact and failed to lever open
the necessary funding. Others argue its open style of working
has meant it has become too sensitive to the views of pressure
groups. The aim is now to get social exclusion work more deeply
embedded in the relevant departments - health, education and
communities.
A small taskforce, partly staffed by members of Mr Blair's
strategy unit and the old social exclusion unit, will be set
up in the Cabinet Office to prepare a detailed action plan.
In future, there will be more focus on trying to force through
strategic changes across Whitehall and on the ground. Hilary
Armstrong acknowledged that social exclusion unit programmes
had failed to reach some of the poorest, most isolated and
vulnerable families. The government wants to train its social
exclusion work on what it describes as these "high harm, high
risk and high lifetime cost" families, with the aim of intervening
in such families as soon as they appear at risk of exclusion,
breakdown or criminal behaviour. Other priority areas will
be children in care, help for the mentally ill and cutting
teenage pregnancy.
(Guardian, 13 June 2006)
On August 14th, 1997, Peter Mandelson (then Minister
without portfolio) announced in a Fabian Society lecture that
the Government was setting up a special 'underclass' unit
in the Cabinet office to target action against poverty and
social exclusion.
The Social Exclusion Unit was then launched by the Government
in December 1997 with a brief to devise policies within two
years to help the disadvantaged. Headed by Tony Blair, its
task is to promote joint action between Whitehall departments
shifting the focus of anti-poverty schemes towards prevention
through the Government's Welfare to Work programme and improving
standards in schools. One initial focus was to address the
growing number of pupils permanently excluded from school.
It set up of a number of initiatives aimed at breaking down
the bureaucratic barriers between governmental departments
and reaching out to a range of socially excluded groups. This
is sometimes referred to as joined-up thinking. In December
1999, Tony Blair admitted that progress was slow. He signalled
a gear change in the drive to tackle poverty and pledged to
bridge the divide between the haves and have-nots and promised
an economic and social audit of the nation before the next
election, to show if the gap was narrowing. He heralded a
"new philosophy" based on investment and incentives targeted
at the less well-off rather than leaving them to benefit from
"trickle-down" economics. However, he set himself against
pursuing policies in favour of the North at the expense of
the South.
At the same time the Prime Minister announced that Mo Mowlam,
the Cabinet Office Minister, is to take charge of the Downing
Street social exclusion unit and will become the Government's
figurehead on issues of poverty and deprivation.
In April 2000 the Government launched the National Strategy
for Urban Renewal aimed at bringing the poorest communities
up the prosperity league over the next decade. It is based
on the unit's analysis of poverty - the most detailed
yet undertaken in England and follows the recommendations
from 18 'cross-cutting' policy action teams which were
set up by the unit.
In May 2002, as part of a Goverment restructuring to create
a department to focus solely on transport, the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister was created to bring together areas
of work from the old Department for Transport, Local Government
and the Regions and the Cabinet Office. The new Office is
responsible for regional and local government (including the
regional Government Offices), housing, planning and regeneration
along with the social exclusion unit and neighbourhood renewal.
The Government's drive to tackle poverty and social
exclusion is beginning to work according to a report from
the social exclusion unit.
In a review of the impact of its work to date, the unit
reports that teenage pregnancy, rough sleeping and school
exclusions - the subjects of its first reports - have all
gone down. But the number of truancies remains constant.
The report stresses that many of the programmes the unit
has helped to devise, such as the neighbourhood renewal scheme,
are extremely long-term in character and will yield results
over 10 to 20 years. However, it says that many indicators
that were worsening in the 1980s and 1990s have now begun
to turn.
The proportion of children in homes where no one is in work
has fallen from 17.9% in 1997 to 15.1%. GCSE results improved
faster in some of the most deprived boroughs between 1998
and 200, and faster for black pupils than all pupils.
In specific areas tackled by the unit, school exclusions
fell 18% between 1997 and 1999 - more than half way to the
target of cutting them by a third by 2002.
(Financial Times, 22 March 2001)
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