The children of the child poverty pledge are growing up. A child who was 5 in 1997 is now 15. A child aged 10 when the Prime Minster made the child poverty pledge in 1999 is now 18. Labour not only needs to deliver the child poverty pledge for today’s children, but also for those who are now in their teenage years.
Labour will always, and quite rightly, be judged on how it has provided support for its most vulnerable citizens. But a truly left of centre government should also be judged on whether it has made its citizens more equal. The child poverty pledge now needs be both widened and extended to include young people. And more needs to be done to tackle the increasing inequality facing young people as they grow up.
Young people in 2007 are doing better in school than ever before. More and more of them are going on to higher education. Their knowledge of IT and modern technology puts their parents firmly back in the 20th century. The future is bright for most young people. But for some, young people from care, young offenders, and young parents, for example, the future still remains bleak. The absolute situation for this group should worry all socially minded politicians. The widening gap between them should become Labour’s new mission.
Labour wants every child to be entitled to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic wellbeing. Over the last ten years, Labour has done a great deal to deliver this for children. Tax credits, record increases in child benefit, investment in Sure Start and children’s centres have meant a better start in life for a generation of children. But as those children grow up they need the support to grow up too.
Young people from care are probably the furthest removed from the government’s stated ambitions. They are disproportionately represented among the homeless, young parents, those suffering from mental illness and the prison population. Young people from care are more than twice as likely to receive a criminal warning, reprimand or conviction than their peers. Not because they are worse behaved – there’s no evidence to suggest that. But the system does treat them differently. Most teenagers who get in a fight might get shouted at by their parents and have their pocket money docked. For a teenager living in a children’s home, the chances are, they’ll end up down the police station. Large numbers spend time homeless before they reach the age of 21. Not because they don’t want to have a safe place to live but because the vast majority are still expected to try to move from their foster placement or children’s home to live independently before the age of 18.
Young people from care and other vulnerable groups need the most support from local and national Government. Yet in the first ten years under Labour, they’ve slipped even further behind.
None of this is to say that Labour has done nothing – far from it. As far back as 1999, the then Health Secretary, Frank Dobson asked social care professionals and Councillors to measure their treatment towards children and young people in care with the benchmark, ‘would this be good enough for my child’. Legislation has placed new obligations upon local authorities and professionals. Youth Matters is attempting to target youth support at the most vulnerable. The teenage pregnancy strategy has led to an 11% drop in conceptions to under 18s. But in spite of these achievements, the gap between groups of young people remains stubbornly wide. A new approach is needed.
After ten years in power, Labour can’t do more of the same. If Labour is really serious about reducing inequality, policies to support the most vulnerable can’t be an add on. Labour’s investment has led to thousands of amazing projects that work with vulnerable groups of young people. But funding streams are chaotic, bureaucratic and waste time. Dedicated professionals are spending too much time filling in funding applications and reporting and not enough time doing the work the money is funding. Good projects get off the ground and start making a difference, and then the money runs out. The funding of this work and those organisations, large and small, who carry it out needs to be stabilised.
The mainstream policy agenda needs to form part of the strategy too. Labour needs to look carefully at how all its policy initiatives impact on the most vulnerable. A new schools admissions policy might enable parents to exert the power of choice. But it will do little for those young people who don’t have parents fighting their corner. An inspection regime that values success in formal exams above all is improving education standards for some. But it doesn’t value the work done by staff when young people start at a school at a disadvantage. It doesn’t enable all young people to secure economic wellbeing in the long term.
What Labour does in the first 100 days under a new leader could reaffirm the Party’s commitment to equality. It’s not enough for Labour to be judged on how it treats the most vulnerable. How the vulnerable compare to others should be the true measure of a Labour policy. Just as children are growing up and beyond the child poverty pledge, Labour’s commitments towards them should do the same.