Since Blair’s return from holiday, social exclusion has been at the forefront of his public statements. Alienation from his party aside, Blair has trailed the publication of a government report on social exclusion (out tomorrow) with a series of statements about the proposed strategies. The most notable - and most publicised - have revolved around tackling the ‘root causes’ of social exclusion. The first pronouncement was to do with identifying potentially problematic children, the second with lowering the teenage pregnancy rate. Yet although the alleged novelty of the proposals is their back to basics nature, they in fact focus too much on tackling the symptoms, in the short-term. Crucially, this means that despite the close connection between the two issues – struggling children and teen parenthood - the strategies are barely linked to each other. The two sets of proposals pay far too little attention to the socio-economic circumstances within which both children with difficult upbringings are born into, and teenagers give birth in.
The proposal to intervene in families which risk producing ‘antisocial’ children, whilst declared to be early intervention, effectively skips the core problem. What makes specific groups of children more susceptible to a difficult childhood, is clearly neither innate in them nor in their parents – it is innate to their circumstances. Blair identified the children of teen parents and alcohol and drug abusers as potential risks. Yet the point is not that bad parenting skills are concentrated within these groups but rather that the situations these parents are in present huge hurdles to their being able to optimally provide for their children. What needs addressing therefore, is why certain teen pregnancy and drug and alcohol addiction are concentrated in certain sections of society. Intervening in childcare arrangements, as the government’s recommendations suggest, leaves the underlying issue unresolved.
The strategy to lower England’s teenage pregnancy rate similarly fails to have a sufficient grasp of the root causes. New proposals simply continue and extend the contraception awareness approach, despite the fact that this approach has had only a limited effect. Such a one-pronged strategy both ignores those girls who are deliberately getting pregnant and does not address the deficit of information about the adverse outcomes of teen parenting for both mother and child.
A large part of the problem is the motivation behind the new strategies for tackling social exclusion. With only a little time left in power, and therefore only a little time to fulfil his promises regarding social equality, Blair is perhaps thinking more about his political legacy and less about the long-term impact of his policies. Most concerning, is that once the money has been earmarked for these hasty strategies, it will be very difficult to reallocate it after Blair’s departure. A fulfilled legacy indeed.