Support Services for Children, Parents and Families during Austerity: Dr Harriet Churchill criticall
In the latest of our series “Austerity and Beyond”, the Oxford Institute of Social Policy was joined by Dr Harriet Churchill, Lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Sheffield. The seminar traced reforms in children, parents and family services back to the New Labour era, which was characterised by ‘progressive universalism’. A whole-system approach was developed whereby all children and families were supported either at a universal level through ‘development support’, or ‘compensatory support’ involving more targeted services aimed at countering disadvantage, and also specialist ‘protected support’ which helped families with complex needs. New Labour adopted a holistic approach to meeting children’s and families’ needs; services were often co-located, integrated and working together.
Image provided by Dr. Harriet Churchill
Responding to a period of welfare state restructuring with the emergence of new social risks, including changing families and changing ideas about welfare, New Labour took a social investment approach in which they prioritised human and social capital investment. This period of social investment and expansion focused particularly on services such as education and health, as well as investing in new ‘flagship’ areas of provision. To illustrate this expansion, between 1997/98 and 2009/10, early years spending increased from £671 per child under 5 years old to £2,514.
Since the economic crisis and the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010, austerity has reconfigured support services. Firstly, in response to the economic context, policy choices were made to impose sustained cuts in public expenditure and reductions in public entitlements, with large reductions in local government budgets and particularly significant cuts in areas such as youth services and Sure Start. Secondly, austerity has also encompassed a rethinking of the framework of social policy and broader ideas about transforming the welfare state. Leaving behind the whole-systems approach that had developed under New Labour, Dr. Churchill argued that support services have been more targeted, underpinned by a reorientation in how we think about childhood disadvantage. The overall message over this period of austerity has been that the state should retreat from intervening in families more broadly and focus on targeted support for specific issues facing the most disadvantaged or “troubled families”.
Accompanying this shift in approach and discourse, was an emphasis on localism, outsourcing services, outcomes-based commissioning, and an empiricist understanding of policy, with the advent of ‘What Works Centres’.
Dr Churchill concluded by discussing some alternatives to the approach we have seen since 2010: a return to the progressive universalism and social investment of the New Labour era, but moving beyond managerialism, dualisms and blame.
Eloise Peck, MSc student in Comparative Social Policy, caught up with Dr Harriet Churchill after the seminar to discuss the policy rationales behind approaches to children and families’ policy and the most pressing issues facing these groups today.
I wanted to begin by asking whether you think the shift we have seen from progressive universalism to a more targeted services approach was a consequence of economic conditions and fiscal constraints, or a policy choice based on ideology?
Yes, both really. It's a policy choice in terms of how you can see the economic constraints and the economic conditions. But it was definitely justified and legitimated on the basis of: we are in a very severe fiscal situation; we have a huge budget deficit; there is not enough spending to go around; so, we have to prioritize. And the way that we're going to think about prioritizing the resources that we have is not only to get better value from the resources we put in, which is the emphasis of evidence-based initiatives, but also, we will target those resources much better towards the most vulnerable, the most disadvantaged. But, actually, it’s been the most disadvantaged that have suffered most.
It’s not that, in practice, the resources have been sufficiently targeted. But the rationale behind a focus on more targeted initiatives was because of the limited expenditure.
And we also saw a shift from big government to big society, as some people would put it. What do you think that the policy rationale was behind that and behind the localism agenda?
I think it's a shame we didn't see a shift to “big society”. I think we did not actually see a shift to big society. That was a problem. There was a critique that previously we had big government, i.e. too much spending as well as too much provision, bureaucracy, central government management and target regimes. There is something in that critique of the New Labour era and this idea of let's try and support and facilitate much more community development and community action and community-based initiatives. This is worrying on one side because it could just be a cost saving mechanism and you are relying much more on volunteers to undertake new roles. Or you're saying the problems communities face are communities’ problems, they are not the problem of the state. For example if you live in a rundown community, or a community that experiences a lot of crime, or a community with a lot of elderly people who are isolated, then it’s down to the community to address that issue.
On one level, I think the idea of a flourishing civil society, the idea of this architecture of community resources, community provision and community support and addressing things like isolation is quite an important agenda. But it was not given the resources or the framework. I think there have been some important initiatives as part of that. Some people would say some of the social action initiatives or the big society funding stream has been important, but that's not a replacement for the state. The state can work in partnership with communities and needs to work in partnership with communities. That kind of thinking hasn't been a complex understanding of state community partnerships and how we can develop society on that basis and promote social welfare. Therefore, you can't help thinking it is an excuse and rhetoric for shrinking the welfare state and shrinking the expectations on the state and privatizing social issues.
Something you also mentioned was this idea of evidence-based policymaking. Some people have argued that what we have seen is policy-based evidence. To what extent do you think that's true of the reforms we've seen in Children's and Family Services?
At a national level, I think it's been very strongly policy based. Policy based rather than evidence based or at best, a very narrow conception of evidence and what counts as evidence. So, evidence in terms of my preferred options, I’ll run with what is the strongest, most rigorous kind of evidence that is around evaluated programs. But at other levels, at a professional level, at a local level sometimes, I think there can be more of an emphasis on trying to build the evidence base and use the evidence base, but also trying to build the evidence base in the sense of capturing promising practice. I think on a national level it is very political, it is very much policy-based decisions. But I think there is a strand of evidence-based initiatives and decision making that is very important.
You also spoke about the idea of social citizenship, particularly around children and young people. I wonder why you think that children and young people were particularly targeted by austerity?
Yes, I think they were particularly targeted. I think retreating the state from the family was quite targeted as well.
They were targeted in the sense of let's re-privatize, let's re-familiarize, let's return things back to personal and family responsibility around children and around social support for families, including the income side of things as well as social care. I think that it has been a very implicit and not very strongly explicit agenda. But it very much ties up with this idea of the shift from big government to big society, because big government exemplified too much intrusion into family life, too much social engineering, telling parents how to raise their children.
This presents a bit of a smokescreen in terms of returning us to the idea that the role of the state in relation to children and young people, is when they are severely having problems, that is when we come on board. But otherwise, it is a matter of parental responsibility as well as autonomy. We are almost getting to the situation where 16/17 year olds have got the vote, but we are not quite there. In Scotland they have gone down that route. I think all that is quite purposeful as well, that we are not willing to see children or young people as more fully blown citizens in that way.
We can cater to our voting constituencies and children and young people do not have such a strong position in that way, but other countries are moving towards granting lower age voting rights. It was on Labour's manifesto, so we might get there. I think that would change the situation.
And so finally, what do you see as the most fundamental issues facing children and families in the UK today? What sort of approach and policies are needed to address these issues?
Across the board we need to review things. We have been moving in the right direction in some areas. So, for example, our shared parental leave scheme, which does give more flexibility and options for parents, whether it's mothers and fathers or two mothers, two fathers, to share responsibilities. Some things are moving in the right direction. Minimal entitlements to the provision of childcare are increasing.
But I think fundamentally challenges for families are matters around income, stability of work and housing. Those are just the basic economic needs. I think we are getting to the point where access to things like dentists and some basic services, which were some of the rationales for our 1940s welfare state, are becoming issues. I think inequalities in terms of the area you live in, the school you go to and the lack of support for careers advice is widening. I think the kind of pressures on families in terms of what is expected of parents as well as the rapid changes that are happening in young people's lives is a real challenge for parents.
There is a range of challenges. And I think we need to look again in terms of parents’ needs, of children's needs and just thinking more broadly in terms of social support as well as facilitating people themselves to participate in decision making and to say something about what they would like to see in their community. The numbers of libraries that have shut, parks that people do not feel safe to go to: all of these are the kinds of things that really enrich childhood and counter inequalities. So perhaps fundamentally it is an issue of inequality really. In the kind of society we live in it is perhaps fundamentally an issue of inequality. But I think the ramifications for somebody with quite limited resources and the kinds of expectations that are on you are significant.
I also think the issues that are perhaps becoming more well-known, the issues around mental health, peer relationships and social media, all of that really needs looking at. There are some other countries that have done really innovative things, and it’s not expensive.
A short excerpt of Eloise Peck's interview with Dr. Churchill is available below.
Produced by Isobel Montgomery.
Music provided is "On The Streets" by Jonathan David Cotton & Ben Niblett
Eloise Peck is reading for the MSc in Comparative Social Policy, having graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She then worked at the London School of Economics Housing and Communities, where she was involved with the Housing Plus Academy, a programme working with social housing tenants, practitioners and government officials to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the sector, particularly in light of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Eloise also has interests in the social determinants of health, particularly in relation to young people.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.