The secretary of state for work and pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has been much in the news of late. Last week, he was exhorting British businesses to hire British workers, though business leaders didn’t sound so keen. This week, we learn he’s launching a new effort to introduce so-called early intervention programmes for vulnerable families, funded by social investors.
IDS has form on this: with Labour MP Graham Allen, he produced a report some years ago, arguing for early intervention. No one would quarrel with investing in programmes that help prevent families becoming excluded and children disadvantaged. But it’s important to recognise that will require far more than mere delivery of parenting support – holistic policies that address issues like poverty, employment, skills, housing and environment will be needed too.
Nor should we think the idea is new. Tony Blair claimed it was possible to identify families whose children would have the most serious problems, in some cases even before the child was born. While professionals and experts expressed concern at such opinions, they led to Labour’s ‘Think Family’ initiative, of concentrated and interventions targeted a small number of highly vulnerable families. Charities such as Family Action, meanwhile, have been working with families facing multiple challenges for years. I must admit I’m struggling to understand how the early intervention now being proposed will differ from what’s gone before.
I’m also concerned that the funding model is built on shaky foundations. Faced with the squeeze on the public finances, IDS has been forced to look elsewhere for the necessary cash. Hence his and Allen’s enthusiasm for social investment, drawing on private funding sources, with returns to investors coming from long-term savings to the public purse that result from the programmes they pay for.
I’ll be surprised to find there are many such investors willing to enter this market. The returns look to be highly speculative, slow to achieve and uneven – the life trajectory of the severely excluded isn’t one of smooth, ever-upward progress and certain reward. But more than that, I wonder if I’m alone in finding something distasteful about treating families as some sort of commodity to invest in.
I don’t doubt the philanthropic motives of IDS, Allen, or even the potential investors, but for all sorts of reasons, I strongly believe that the state has the primary responsibility here, and must guarantee public funding. The privatisation of social welfare that’s being proposed takes us backwards to pre-welfare state. Enabling even the most well-meaning investor to profit from human misery undermines our collective humanity, and leaves the poorest individuals without rights: whatever the intentions of the initiative, the risk of gaps in provision and stigma will be very high. I’m all for early intervention to prevent future problems, but society as a whole gains from such initiatives, and must have the responsibility to foot the cost.