“What are the problems on the estate? Well, we’ve got drugs, youths on streets intimidating families, known families going around and causing trouble to everyone else, poverty and the benefits trap, truancy, exclusion from schools, teenage pregnancy, poor parenting, lack of pre-school facilities, lack of child care facilities. Oh, and low expectations.”
Front-line worker who took part in the research.
The Government’s strategy to overturn more than twenty years of neglect and declining public services in disadvantaged neighbourhoods faces an uphill task. New ‘joined-up’ thinking on regeneration may have led to management changes, but many residents of run-down estates are still waiting to see significant signs of improvement.
This warning comes in a new report about the reality of social exclusion on estates, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from housing consultant, David Page. Based on discussion groups with residents and front-line workers in three contrasting low-income neighbourhoods, it finds compelling evidence of the way that social problems like crime, drug dealing, school failure and family breakdown are linked.
Only a minority of residents displayed the lack of aspirations, demotivation, low skills and lack of qualifications associated with social isolation and exclusion. But residents and staff believed their alienated attitudes were typical of an estate ‘culture’ where anti- social behaviour was tolerated and low personal achievement was accepted as the norm.
The research also highlighted a serious lack of support for children and families under stress on the estates. Vulnerable parents and children were being housed in conditions where any family would have found it difficult to thrive. The study found that young people who had been unemployed since leaving school were especially likely to come from broken homes and to have been brought up by a birth parent and succession of partners.
Although most residents were content to continue living on their estates, their commitment to stay was by no means unconditional. They were ‘communities in the balance’ because renewal would be more difficult if conditions did not improve and residents with a choice were to leave. There was general agreement that the neighbourhoods were ‘going downhill’ and public services were in decline. This perception was underlined by the fact that local authorities in all three areas were – at the time of the discussion groups – seeking service cuts to balance their budgets.
David Page said: “Service cutbacks, a failure to engage local communities and a breakdown of trust between residents and service providers in these areas appeared to reinforce one another and contribute to a vicious circle of disaffection. The strong perception of these communities was that public services to estates had declined in volume and quality at a time when the number and needs of disadvantaged households had increased.”
He added: “The evidence of this research is that social exclusion has structural causes and a strong community and neighbourhood dimension. The collapse of manual work in traditional industries has contributed directly to the increasing concentration of poverty and disadvantage on social housing estates. This has been reinforced by the use of lettings policies that lead to concentrations of vulnerable families and children on the least popular estates.
“Poor areas require constant attention and seriously disadvantaged and vulnerable families need consistent support. Yet this study found that resources were not getting through to provide the scale and quality of services required to tackle social exclusion. The Government’s National Strategy for Area Renewal is a move in the right direction, but there is clearly still a long way to go. The problems faced by individuals, communities and public services on troubled estates are deep-seated and need time, commitment and adequate resources to put right.”
