Social Justice: transforming lives

Social Justice: transforming lives

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions by Command of Her Majesty March 2012

Cm 8314

?14.75

Social Justice: transforming lives

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions by Command of Her Majesty March 2012

Cm 8314

?14.75

? Crown Copyright 2012.

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.uk/social-justice

For more information about this publication, contact: Social Justice and Disadvantaged Groups Division Department for Work and Pensions 7th Floor Caxton House Tothill Street London SW1H 9NA E-mail: dwp.socialjustice@dwp..uk

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ISBN: 9780101831420

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Contents.

Introduction

4

The scale of the challenge

5

Measuring multiple disadvantage

8

Why this Government believes that a new approach is necessary

9

A new ethos

10

The importance of finding new solutions

11

The Social Justice Cabinet Committee

11

Related strategies

12

A lifecycle approach

13

Chapter 1: Supporting families

14

The problem

15

Relationship quality and stability

15

Family formation

16

Family breakdown

17

Changing the narrative

17

What Government is doing

18

The future

25

Chapter 2: Keeping young people on track

26

The problem

27

What Government is doing

29

The future

35

Chapter 3: The importance of work

36

The problem

37

Challenging the culture of worklessness

38

The future

46

Chapter 4: Supporting the most disadvantaged adults

47

The problem

49

Building a clearer picture

50

New approaches to tackling multiple disadvantages

50

The future

59

Chapter 5: Delivering Social Justice

60

The need for strong local partnerships and leadership

61

Creating the right environment for innovative delivery

62

The role of a new social economy

64

The future

68

Social Justice: transforming lives 1

Foreword by the Secretary of State

I was recently handed a report by a charity containing images and sculptures created by a number of vulnerable children. One of the scenes was produced by ten young people whose parents were substance abusers, and the caption below the photo read as follows:

"The house of children whose parents are addicted to crack-cocaine. Dad has passed out on the mattress in his own vomit, mum is crouched over a table, preparing her fix. What you don't see is the child hidden in the corner crying."

This is how these children chose to represent their home lives.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. In the UK today there are hundreds of thousands of individuals and families living profoundly troubled lives marked by multiple disadvantages. For example, the Government recently identified a group of 120,000 troubled families whose lives are so chaotic they cost the Government some ?9 billion in the last year alone. But this pales in comparison to the human cost, with children who grow up in damaging and unstable environments frequently set on a path to poorer outcomes later in life. For example, we know that an incredible 24 per cent of prisoners state that they were taken into care as a child.

These are not new challenges, but they are in need of a new approach. We can no longer sustain a strategy based on maintenance alone, more concerned with pushing people just above the poverty line than changing their lives. That is why this strategy sets out an ambitious new vision for supporting the most disadvantaged individuals and families in the UK.

That vision is based on two fundamental principles. First, prevention throughout a person's life, with carefully designed interventions to stop people falling off track and into difficult circumstances. This starts with support for the most important building block in a child's life ? the family ? but also covers reform of the school and youth justice systems, the welfare system, and beyond to look at how we can prevent damaging behaviours like substance abuse and offending.

Second, the strategy sets out our vision for a `second chance society'. Anybody who needs a second chance in society should be able to access the support and tools they need to transform their lives.

Delivery must be focused on providing these services. Early intervention, social investment, payment by results, multi-agency delivery ? these should be the watchwords for every government department, local authority and private or voluntary sector provider in the coming years.

2 Introduction

What does all of this mean in practice? It means we should start to see vulnerable parents being supported from the early days of their children's lives, accessing health advice and able to build a loving and supportive environment for their children to grow up in. It means we should start to see families who used to be inundated by government agencies having a known and trusted single point of contact, someone who knows their name and their story. And it means we should start to see people with long-term drug dependence who have been maintained in their condition for many years referred to local, innovative, organisations who are able to invest in getting them back into work, getting them clean, and changing their lives. For too long we have measured our success in tackling poverty in terms of the simplistic concept of income transfer. This strategy sets out a much more ambitious approach, aspiring to deliver Social Justice through life change which goes much wider than increases in family income alone. Social Justice must be about changing and improving lives, and the different ways this can be achieved.

The Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith Chair, Social Justice Cabinet Committee Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Social Justice: transforming lives 3

The Government's ambitions for Social Justice apply to the whole United Kingdom, as set out in this document. However, we recognise that many of the policy levers are in the hands of the devolved administrations and that, as such, these administrations are responsible for their own devolved policies and are therefore not bound by this strategy. The Government will, however, work closely with the devolved administrations and with delivery agents large and small to promote the principles across all parts of the United Kingdom.

4 Introduction

Introduction

Social Justice is about making society function better ? providing the support and tools to help turn lives around. This is a challenging new approach to tackling poverty in all its forms. It is not a narrative about income poverty alone: this Government believes that the focus on income over the last decades has ignored the root causes of poverty, and in doing so has allowed social problems to deepen and become entrenched. In this chapter we define Social Justice and describe the new set of principles that inform our approach: 1. A focus on prevention and early intervention 2.W here problems arise, concentrating interventions on

recovery and independence, not maintenance 3.P romoting work for those who can as the most sustainable route out of

poverty, while offering unconditional support to those who are severely disabled and cannot work 4.R ecognising that the most effective solutions will often be designed and delivered at a local level 5. Ensuring that interventions provide a fair deal for the taxpayer Social Justice is closely related to another Government priority: to increase social mobility. The Social Mobility Strategy1 is about ensuring people are able to move up the social ladder, regardless of background; this Social Justice Strategy is about ensuring everybody can put a foot on that ladder.

1 Cabinet Office, 2011, Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers: A Strategy for Social Mobility

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