Condition of Britain in Manchester: A focus on children and families

IPPR went to Manchester to talk about children and families as part of the Condition of Britain programme. Along with Jon Cruddas, we started the day with a visit to a fantastic SureStart family centre in Benchill, a district in southern Manchester and part of the Wythenshawe council estate. We then moved on to the Wythenshawe Forum, a successful community and leisure centre, where Jon made a speech about the pressures on modern childhood and the vital role of fathers. We chatted to staff, volunteers and service-users from Woodhouse Park Family Centre, a small charity offering services to local families. We finished the day with a meeting at Manchester town hall with council leaders, officers and school heads from across Greater Manchester.

Benchill SureStart family centre

The centre, run by Barnardo’s on behalf of Manchester City Council, focuses on engaging local families in a range of services, with a comprehensive outreach service and lots of support for parents as well as children. Along with other centres in Manchester, Benchill Sure Start is pioneering a baby registration service to reach out to new parents – both mothers and fathers – and start to build relationships between parents and staff. We chatted to a group of parents about the pressures of bringing up children in Wythenshawe and their hopes for the future. Some parents felt cut-off in Wythenshawe, which is some distance – physically and psychologically – from central Manchester. ‘I feel stuck here’, one mum said. Money worries were also a big issue, often driven by benefit changes and the lack of suitable local jobs, but parents really valued the support offered by the centre.

‘I don’t have family nearby so this place is like my family’

A speech by Jon Cruddas at the Wythenshawe Forum, followed by a panel discussion

Jon talked about the issue of engaging dads in children’s lives. Local services are too often based around the child’s relationship with their mother, he said, with fathers sometimes feeling pushed out. Excluding fathers ‘lets them off the hook’, said Jon. We should have high expectations of fathers but also make sure they get the right support.

Jon was joined on the panel by councillor Afzal Khan, executive member for children’s services at Manchester City Council, and Jonathan Rallings, assistant director of policy and research at Barnardo’s. Audience members raised concerns about the lack of support for grandparents as carers of children, as well as fathers.

'Grandparents are the glue that hold many families together'

We also talked about the commercial pressures on young children and how to tackle gender stereotyping.

Woodhouse Park Family Centre

This is a small charity in Wythenshawe set up by a local church to provide services for local families. A central part of their work is running a child contact centre, a safe space where non-resident parents can spend time with their children. It means parents and children who don’t live together can experience a ‘normal’ relationship while cooking a meal or playing in the garden. Staff and volunteers were passionate about the local services they provided but  found it difficult to secure funding due their small size and lack of capacity to secure large contracts. They had also seen a large increase in families requesting food parcels over the last few years, and talked about desperate parents eating newspaper to stave off hunger while making sure their children had enough to eat.

Meeting at Manchester town hall

We ended the day with a meeting with local government officers, council leaders and school heads from across Greater Manchester to hear about local children’s services. Participants were keen to stress that Greater Manchester does not expect to get more cash from central government, but wants longer funding settlements and more integrated public budgets. Officers stressed the priority given to evidence-based tools in Greater Manchester, like the 'Incredible Years' programme that’s designed to improve young children’s behaviour by engaging parents and early years staff.

School improvement was also a key topic, led by the Manchester Schools Alliance, which brings together local schools and practitioners to raise school performance locally rather than relying on national interventions. Manchester has seen major improvements in school performance over the last decade but concerns remain around both pre-school children and school leavers. Further investment is needed to boost school readiness through early years care and education, while Manchester’s academy schools are working with local employers to raise pupils’ soft skills and help more young people move into work in the local area.

Listening event with St Mungo's and Revolving Doors

As part of the Condition of Britain programme, IPPR held an informal discussion group with service-users of Revolving Doors Agency and St Mungo’s, two charities that work with people who have faced – and often overcome – serious challenges in their lives, including homelessness, reoffending, addiction and mental health issues. The discussion was led by Jon Cruddas, who is leading the Labour party’s policy review.

We talked about how it feels to hit crisis point and what needs to change so that people get better support to regain control over their lives.

‘You go to the council and you see people dealing with numbers and rules. You’re not seen as a person, as someone with needs’

There was a real sense of frustration that statutory services don’t treat people as individuals with complicated lives. Staff were seen as focusing on targets and rules, and lacking the time develop a relationship with their clients. This kind of support had to come from charities like St Mungo’s and Revolving Doors, where caseworkers were praised for dealing with multiple problems together and maintaining support over time.  

‘If you go to a restaurant, you chose it and you choose what to eat. All we want is to be able to choose the services we get, how we’re treated’

Statutory services were seen as bureaucratic and inflexible, with users having little say over the nature or quality of the support they received. In places like St Mungo’s and Revolving Doors, user involvement was at the heart of service design and delivery, with an active programme of user forums and volunteering.

‘If you’re homeless, you’re vulnerable. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from’

A lack of housing for single adults leaving prison was consistently raised as the most important problem among the people we spoke to. Most had left prison with no secure housing or job offer and had no access to social housing, with many ending up homeless and dragged back into reoffending.

‘None of us have ever said we want more money from the state. We want the services to work better’

Despite the many challenges they faced, the people we spoke to weren’t demanding more money from government. They wanted existing services to work better – to have the support in place to help them move on and give something back. They relished being part of the solution, whether helping to design services, training as caseworkers and volunteers to help others facing similar challenges, or talking to politicians about what needs to change.

What can we learn?

The challenges faced by the people we spoke to are exceptionally difficult to tackle. For decades, policymakers have been grappling with the question of how to better support people with serious and multiple problems. Some of the questions raised in this session that we want to explore further include:

• How can we make sure people are treated as individuals while also making sure that everyone gets the right support and service providers are held to account?
• What is the right balance between specialist services for people with multiple problems and mainstream services that don’t ignore people with serious difficulties?
• How do we balance the desire to reward contribution while ensuring that those in most need get the right help to turn their lives around?
• How can we reconfigure statutory services for people with complex needs so that user involvement in service design and delivery is systematic?
• What we can learn in the context of supporting single adults from the Family Intervention Project model of a dedicated caseworker to smooth interactions with statutory services?

Embracing a conservative case for justice reform

A provocative new paper by US conservative Pat Nolan, with a response by UK shadow justice minister Sadiq Khan, makes the case for rebalancing justice systems on both sides of the Atlantic towards rehabilitation and away from imprisonment, particularly for vulnerable and minor offenders.

By focusing on improving outcomes for offenders and communities, and the fiscal realities that cast doubt on the value for money of long-term incarceration, two commentators from opposite sides of the political divide agree that the justice system can work more effectively and efficiently.

IPPR associate director Rick Muir has written a blog about these issues for the New Statesman. Rick is the author of an earlier IPPR report arguing for 'justice reinvestment' as a model for redirecting resources away from imprisonment and into community-based alternatives.

Jon Cruddas and Liam Byrne write for Juncture

Labour MPs Jon Cruddas and Liam Byrne have co-authored a brilliant essay setting the scene for the Condition of Britain work to come. It was originally published in the latest issue of Juncture, IPPR's journal for rethinking the centre-left.

The authors frame the central challenge and focus of our major programme of work:

'Out in the country, people are full of hopes for society and ideas about what we can do together to make it better. There is a hunger to find ways we can: end the waste of long-term unemployment; lift the deadening burden of personal debt; mobilise the leadership of our towns and cities; ensure disabled people are in charge of their own lives; provide all young people with a shot at making something of themselves; release the energies of the people and institutions who provide our public services; and connect those with time and a sense of compassion with those who lack relationships and suffer from loneliness or isolation.

'The challenges facing the country are great and we will not have a good society by accident; it will depend on how each of us choose to live and the sort of politics we are able to forge ... Our task now is to show how we can silence the siren calls of pessimism to offer the hope that, by coming together, we can overcome the obstacles facing this generation and build a good society for all our citizens.'

Event review: Jon Cruddas launches The Condition of Britain

Jon Cruddas MP, head of Labour’s policy review, spoke at the launch of IPPR's new flagship research programme, The Condition of Britain, which will explore the major pressures facing individuals, families and communities in Britain today.

Click here to download the text of Jon Cruddas' speech

New video: Jon Cruddas backs The Condition of Britain

Appearing on BBC Newsnight, Labour's policy chief, Jon Cruddas, spoke to his constituents in Dagenham about the social issues which will inform IPPR’s new flagship research programme.

(Screened 13 February 2013. Copyright BBC Newsnight)