Social Exclusion Policy and Impact - Essay Example

Running Head: SOCIAL EXCLUSION Social Exclusion Policy and Impact By ______________________ Introduction Of Policy Government policies have always aimed to lessen social exclusion by creating different policies in context with legal, political and regulatory frameworks. The Government started showing interest in 'Social Exclusion' agenda in 1997; just after the arrival of the New Labour Government in UK (Marsh, 2004) Social Exclusion unit was setup on a global basis, under the administration of the Tony Blair Government aimed at the joint venture of combating social exclusion throughout Britain, thereby including the cooperation of other administrations of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland. The unit was established and it was decided that policies would be planned and revised every two years. The SEU (1997) takes a somewhat wider view in its description of its remit, describing social exclusion as a "Short-hand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a concentration of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low income, poor housing, high crime, bad health and family breakdown". (Hills, 2004, p. 52) The aim was just to eradicate poverty along with the equal inflow of wealth from the rich towards the poor. Despite a number of joint initiatives, which included identification of obstructions and breaking them up, the Government remained unable to achieve the goals even after two years. In 1999, after visualising the slow progress of the work, Tony Blair took an initiative of 'auditing' the nation socially by introducing a new policy based on 'investment and incentives' (SEU, June 2006) It was in April 2000, that under Blair's Government, analysis was made after which poor communities were identified and action was taken to support them with proper housing and employment. Since May 2002, national governments and regional groupings such as the EU have increasingly recognised growing poverty and exclusion. Reform of public welfare systems and reviews of other challenges to social policy have been high on the policy agenda. Yet few governments, apart from the UK, have recognised the factors associated with that of social exclusion like growth in housing and unemployment. Social Exclusion - Present Scenario In order to combat homelessness, UK Government has taken initiatives like in Redbridge; a team has been setup, which is aimed at providing temporary shelter to the homeless people. After providing them such kind of accommodation other opportunities for them are explored, which provides enough time to search for better jobs and opportunities. (Redbridge, 2006a) According to Redbridge, 2006a, the services offered are: "Landlord/ Tenant Negotiation, Housing advice, Housing Benefit advice/ Troubleshooting, rent deposit for priority homeless and legal support to evicted people". (2006a) This is what the Government has aimed so far, now in order to assess for how far the Government has remained true in achieving this aim, let us analyse some of the conditions depicting current scenario of UK streets. According to Nj.com (Nov 14, 2006), it is assumed by default that thousands of homeless people have been provided with the basic necessities of life like shelter, bed etc; however the condition presents some different facts. Essex County residents were provided assistance since 1996, at that time the number of homeless were 30, 600, today it is 9,800. That does not simply mean that 'homeless assistance' has helped decrease the number of social excluded people more than half percent. (Essex, 2006a) as according to sagepub (2006), "On any one night in the countries of the European Union (with a population of some 340 million people), around l.l million are without homes, up to 5 million are permanently homeless and up to l5 million live in severe housing stress in sub-standard conditions". (Sagepub, 2006a) The criticism points towards the loopholes of the plan which states that "under Welfare Reform, assistance is provided only for five years" (2006a) On asking the county officials, the answer is a plan for homeless is in progress and as soon it accomplishes, it would be implemented, however a plan has never been organised for moving the street people in shelter. (2006a) The Government has answered the critics in a way that seems effective enough to reduce the poverty level. In order to tackle 'homelessness' in Redbridge, the Government has introduced a series of benefits and rewards to those housing organisations that help preventing homelessness. Currently in 2005, the government has launched Gold Award competition, which is an open house invitation to help unsheltered people. "The winning organisation will win a prize worth 50,000 pounds along with 'Gold Award' on their websites and possessions to recognize their success". (Housing, 2006a) Also they would receive a share of Government funds of 3 million pounds, which would help them to enhance their motivation to work for people's welfare on Governmental level. (2006a) Social Exclusion - Historical Context While analysing the issue of social exclusion in the historical context in Britain, it is found that academics and policy-makers were particularly concerned with the poor state of the rural housing in England since 1980s. Key government reports points to the wide-scale nature of inadequate housing conditions, whether in terms of the absence of basic amenities or crowding in properties, and the improvement of the general housing stock in rural areas formed a key goal of housing and rural policy during this period. By the 1970s, the general success of central policy initiatives aimed at tackling substandard housing, together with an in-movement of new groups to rural areas, had ensured that rural housing conditions ceased to be a significant concern for rural researchers and policymakers. By 1981, the English Housing Condition Survey revealed that only 7 per cent of the rural housing stock remained in a state of unfitness. (Milbourne, 2004, p. 90) Academic studies of rural living and poverty undertaken in the early 1990s have confirmed the trends. For example, key findings from a major survey of lifestyles in twelve rural areas in England by Cloke et al. (1994) reveal that 8 per cent of households were living in inadequate housing conditions, with further analyses of these data highlighting that such rural housing conditions were disproportionately associated with poor households (Cloke and Milbourne, 2001). More recent official statistics on housing conditions also highlight the continued existence of geographical concentrations of poor housing in rural areas. The 1998 Welsh Housing Condition Survey indicates high rates of unfitness in western areas of rural Wales, with in excess of 10 per cent of the housing stock classified as unfit. (Welsh Assembly Government, 1998). Broader studies of rural living have provided further indications of the scale of rural housing needs in selected rural localities in England. Cloke et al.'s (1994) survey of 3,000 households in 12 rural localities conducted during the early 1990s revealed that 68 per cent of respondents were experiencing difficulties in securing housing in their areas, with young people identified as the main 'needy' group. Utilising qualitative evidence from their surveys, Cloke et al. (1994) also argue that rural housing problems need to be understood within broader contexts of structural and demand-led processes, but that these housing problems take on different forms in different types of rural locality. (Milbourne, 2004, p. 90) Rural Housing Affordability More recently, attempts have been made by the government's Countryside Agency to record the overall scale and geographies of housing need in rural England. By combining local data on household incomes, property selling prices and mortgage rates, the Agency provides an extremely detailed picture of rural housing affordability. Three main findings emerge from this analysis. First, in national terms, rural housing appears to be less affordable than that in urban areas (recording an income-to-mortgage cost index of 4.94 compared with 4.66 for urban housing). A second key finding is that there exists a distinct north-south divide in relation to rural housing affordability in England, with problems of affordability most pronounced in the southeast and southwest regions. Third, housing affordability in rural England is characterised by a rather complex geography, with a great deal of spatial variation in affordability scores evident at the regional and local levels. (Milbourne, 2004, p. 95) Rural Homelessness The main key factor that can be identified for the neglect of rural homelessness as based on research relates to the reduced visibilities of homelessness in rural areas and the associated methodological problems of researching hidden groups of the population. The rural homeless remain hidden, not only due to the dispersed settlement structure of rural areas, but also through the lack of services and facilities for homeless groups in these spaces, such as hostels, shelters and drop-in centres. Arguably, it is the presence of such sites in urban areas that provides homelessness with its visibility. (2004, p. 99) Statistical profiles of rural homelessness in Britain indicate strong similarities between the profile and causes of homelessness in rural and urban areas, with these similarities linked to the narrow definition of homelessness utilised by central government. Households with, or expecting, children account for the bulk of homeless cases in rural England (less than three-quarters of the total in 1996), with the remaining cases consisting of households considered vulnerable on account of age (9 per cent), disability (10 per cent), domestic violence (4 per cent) and other reasons (3 per cent). In relation to the key causes of homelessness in rural areas, four factors account for almost 90 per cent of cases: the loss of rented accommodation; the refusal of family or friends to continue to provide housing; the breakdown of a personal relationship; and the inability to maintain mortgage payments. (2004, p. 101) Recent work on rural homelessness has also focused on the ways that homeless people are dealt with by welfare agencies. Much of this work has centred on policy responses to rural homelessness and the practical difficulties encountered by welfare agencies in meeting the needs of homeless people in rural areas. However, attempts have been made to make connections between national homelessness policies and local initiatives aimed at dealing with homelessness in rural areas. Community action agencies, churches, and small nonprofit organisations are the primary providers of homeless assistance in rural areas. Their limited capabilities and resources restrict the range of services available. Small communities often lack hospitals, public hospitals, public housing, public transportation, and public assistance offices that are taken for granted in urban areas. Local governments generally are inadequately staffed and ill equipped to provide homeless services. (2004, p. 121) Interest in the spaces of poverty has also emerged from outside of British academic geography. The election of the New Labour Government in 1997, and its subsequent re-election in 2001, created new political and policy spaces for poverty, as well as new social science poverty agendas. The New Labour Government recognised and adopted an official definition of poverty, based on the number of households living on less than half the average income. It has also introduced a suite of policies aimed at reducing overall levels of poverty for example, the minimum wage and new working tax credits and policies concerned with lifting particular social groups out of persistent poverty, including children, young people, rough sleepers, single parents and the elderly. (2004, p. 122) There is no doubt the current policies shaped by Blair's Government is subjected towards criticism, but it is also a fact that no other Government has dared to attempt to solve the issue of 'social exclusion' like this before. First, new programmes of government-commissioned research on poverty-related issues have tended to be undertaken by academics. Second, the New Labour administrations have compiled and published an increased and better quality supply of statistical information on poverty in the UK. While many of these new data sets have been focused on the social components of poverty at the national spatial scale, local statistics on poverty have also been produced. It is this latter type of poverty data that has introduced new opportunities to examine the geographies of poverty in the UK. Although welfare geographers have been able to make limited use of local surrogate indicators of poverty provided by the Censuses of Population, over the last few years central government has published new sets of local indicators of poverty, based on the receipt of state benefits that are available to low-income households. These new statistics have allowed for more meaningful assessments of the local geographies of poverty within Britain. (Hills, 2004, p. 52) The government's annual Opportunity for All (OFA) report includes more than fifty indicators to monitor its 'strategy to tackle poverty and social exclusion'. (2004, p. 52) The indicators used cover not only low income but also educational attainment, mortality rates, smoking, teenage conceptions, employment, housing standards, rough sleeping, drug use, pension scheme membership, fear of crime, burglary rates, and fuel poverty. Some of these are measured at the individual or household level, others across deprived areas. Earlier, the independent New Policy Institute (NPI) started publishing a set of fifty 'poverty and social exclusion indicators', many of which are also now tracked by the OFA series. (2004, p. 55) According to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) which allows comparison of relative income poverty rates on a consistent basis, four countries, three in Scandinavia, had rates which were less than half that in the UK. However, more recent data from a different source suggests that between 1998 and 2001 the UK's child poverty rate moved from being the worst in the European. Only Ireland had a worse poverty rate for its elderly population than the UK. In all countries except Luxembourg, poverty rates for the elderly were higher than the average and were surprisingly high in Scandinavia. (2004, p. 56) In other words, despite being a comparatively rich country, which ought to help their living standards, a larger proportion of British children were poor against an absolute international standard than in most comparable countries. Given the halving in child poverty against a roughly comparable absolute standard between 1996-97 and 2001-02, the UK's position may now have improved on this measure by comparison with the US, at least, if not other countries. (2004, p. 56) The recent changes in UK views have taken the UK out of line with most other European countries. The proportion blaming laziness or lack of will power is higher in the UK than in any of the countries apart from Portugal. Notably, four of the six countries where people are most likely to blame laziness on the part of the poor are Portugal, the UK, Greece, and Ireland also had four of the six highest relative poverty rates in Europe in 2001. Conversely, the proportion blaming 'much injustice in our society' is lower in the UK than in any of the others apart from Denmark and the Netherlands. The latter two countries are much more equal in income terms than the UK, and have much less relative poverty, which may be why they tend not to blame injustice. Despite the UK's rather different position from most of the rest of Europe, less than a quarter of respondents to either survey attribute poverty to individual laziness. (2004, p. 56) The majority of the British population is more generous in its assessment of what poverty means than a pure subsistence line. Consistently, most people see poverty as being about being unable to afford necessities that go beyond just being able to eat and live. Evidence suggests that new items are seen as 'necessities' over time as overall living standards rise. New Labour's initial policies were rather different from what might have been expected from Labour in government in the 1960s and 1970s or in opposition in the 1980s. Labour's 1997 election policy put little stress on poverty and inequality, explicitly pledged to stick to Conservative public spending plans in its first two years in office, and promised not to increase income tax rates. The main immediate reform was to set up the 'New Deal' measures aimed at reducing youth unemployment in particular. Another of five immediate pledges was to reduce primary school class sizes for 5-7-year-olds, using savings from abolishing the Assisted Places scheme (which had contributed towards private school fees). But, apart from this, Labour promised very little: for instance, it abandoned the pledges of increased state pensions that had been made in election campaigns between 1983 and 1992. (2004, p. 59) The government also started work immediately on the first of its new tax credits, the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC), aimed at low-paid families with children. This was eventually implemented in October 1999. In combination with Britain's first National Minimum Wage, it was described as helping to 'make work pay', reducing the disincentives caused by incomes in low-paid work for some being little higher than the incomes of those out of work. To reinforce the psychological impact of the WFTC on attitudes to work, it was originally to be paid only through the wage packet, unlike its predecessor benefit (Family Credit) that helped low-paid families with children. In the event, the Treasury conceded that couples could choose which partner received it, allowing continuing direct payments to mothers caring for children, for instance. (2004, p. 212) Not only in the UK, levels of social protection are too low to enable people to meet essential needs for more than a short period but also poverty in Europe is increasingly experienced by the able-bodied of working age, some of whom are in the labour market, and increases in unemployment have produced a growing proportion of unemployed people not covered by contributory benefits and ever larger numbers needing a minimum income from social security payments. Social protection measures and their implementation vary throughout Europe, but the need to control budget deficits and inflation has led many EU member states to reduce social welfare programmes when demand for them is rising, either because social insurance cover has expired, or because employment records were insufficient to qualify. (Mosley, 2003) Thus, there is a need to adhere to the policies that reduces social exclusion; only in this manner one can hope that elimination of social problems is possible. References & Bibliography Cloke, P., Milbourne, P. and Thomas, C. (1994) Lifestyles in Rural England, London: Rural Development Commission. Cloke, P. and Milbourne, P. (2001) Poverty, social exclusion and rural space: making connections. Paper presented to the Association of American Geographers annual meeting, New York. Essex, 2006a Accessed from Hills John, (2004) Inequality and the State: Oxford University Press: Oxford, England. Housing, 2006a Accessed from < http://www.uk-housing.co.uk/HMD/ARCHIVE/06/03/322/> Marsh Alex, (2004) Housing and the Social Exclusion Agenda in England. In: Australian Journal of Social Issues. Volume: 39. Issue: 1. Mosley Paul, (2003) Poverty and Social Exclusion in North and South: Essays on Social Policy and Global Poverty Reduction: Routledge: New York. Milbourne Paul, (2004) Rural Poverty: Marginalisation and Exclusion in Britain and the United States: Routledge: London. Redbridge, 2006a Accessed from Sagepub, 2006a Accessed from < eau.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/1/149.pdf> SEU, June 2006 Accessed from Welsh Assembly Government (1998) Welsh House Condition Survey, Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government. Read More