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Social Inclusion

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on initiating this debate. One of the most important responsibilities facing any modern government is to frame policies that promote social inclusion. We have seen all too graphically, both in this country and very recently abroad, what happens when groups feel so marginalised, alienated and dispossessed that they take the law into their own hands. That is why I welcome this debate. I know from my work as a Lancashire county councillor and as chair and now president of the Association of Police Authorities how much good work is going on up and down the country to combat social exclusion and promote community cohesion. The role of governments in this important arena is to create a framework of policies at national level to help the most vulnerable and marginalised groups in society and to promote social inclusion and social integration while at the same time celebrating diversity and cultural difference. A lot has been done at national level in the past eight years, but I want to focus on how these policies are being delivered up and down the country and on what impact they are having. Good policies are important, but unless they are effectively delivered on the ground to communities and families, we will not achieve the levels of social inclusion that we all want to see. One of the most important developments over the past 10 years at local government level has been the development of a network of welfare rights advisory services across the country. These offer practical help and advice on benefits and allowances tailored particularly to those who most need help and are least likely to know where to find it. Welfare rights officers have developed imaginative and hard-hitting projects to reach the disabled, those who care for them, other vulnerable groups, the desperately poor—whether single mothers or elderly pensioners—and ethnic groups. Examples of that work include the Children with Disabilities project run by Hertfordshire Money Advice Unit, which maximises benefit income for the families of children with disabilities, and outreach work in Bristol relating to disability benefits among ethnic communities, which uses interpreters to provide information and help with claims. Tameside, like other authorities, runs a very comprehensive welfare rights service. But I was particularly struck by its post of Macmillan welfare rights officer, developed in partnership with the primary care trust and Macmillan Cancer Relief. The main source of referrals is Macmillan nurses and district nurses. That strong partnership enables those who face critical and debilitating health challenges to access the financial and other help that is available. Tameside also has a Visual First Welfare Rights Officer to ensure that all newly registered blind people get a benefit check and the help and support that they need to make claims and to access help. People who suffer from mental health problems are particularly vulnerable in our modem society even though there are so many innovative care in the community initiatives. It is particularly important that police officers in custody suites are properly trained to deal with potential offenders who have mental health problems and that they have close links with health authorities. So often the solution to what seems like offending behaviour is medical help. Having nurses in custody suites to help with mental health and drug problems has been invaluable in diagnosing individual problems and endeavouring to find appropriate treatment programmes—a practice which needs to be extended.       Engagement in sport has proved a particularly effective way of helping disadvantaged and disabled young people. The programme run from the Royal School for the Deaf and Behaviour Disorders in Cheadle for a summer sports camp with 500 able-bodied young people and 500 disabled youngsters—organised with the help of Sport England and local grants—has been such a success that, next year, it will be expanded to three weeks. Using sport as a vehicle for constructive engagement is also true of schemes across local authorities. In Burnley, for example, the mentoring of young offenders and those vulnerable to crime on a one-to-one basis and engaging them through sporting activity not only helps them to integrate into society and become more responsible young citizens; it then uses their skills to reach out to help other youngsters in trouble. In that context, I should like to pay tribute to large numbers of police officers and other uniformed personnel across the country who organise sporting activities, often in their own time and run on money raised by volunteers, to help disadvantaged and alienated youngsters from a range of different backgrounds. I have been particularly impressed with recent initiatives launched in the north-west working with prisoners to address their problems and to help them reintegrate back into society and reduce the risks of their reoffending. The Step-On project which operates across Liverpool and Manchester prisons works intensively to help secure accommodation and work for ex-prisoners and to support them in addressing their problems. There are other such initiatives, involving a wide range of partners, operating at other prisons. These initiatives then link with community programmes that help ex-offenders to secure work placements and equip them first—if they need them, and often they do—with basic skills to help them, once they have a job, to keep it. Operation Pier in the Wirral has police, probation, health, the local authority and housing working with prolific and persistent offenders to help them change their ways and become part of the community. In the past two years, 120 prolific offenders have so far passed through that programme with a great deal of success. I would particularly like to highlight the role of regional offices up and down the country which liaise with local councils and strategic and community safety partnerships to spread ideas and good practice and target funding. They act as a bridge between central and local government, and regional directors have contributed very effectively and enthusiastically to social inclusion agendas. In turn, they have identified problems and obstacles to progress and reported those back to central government. In particular, in Oldham and Burnley a number of important community and voluntary initiatives have been launched since the riots of 2001. It is particularly encouraging to note the activities of the young people in those areas, working across communities, through youth councils and other networks, and seeking to learn lessons and mediation skills. Many of them have gone to Northern Ireland and worked closely with people there to learn from their experiences. Another important area of activity has been combating drug abuse and promoting drug rehabilitation schemes, such as Tower in Blackpool. It started under the auspices of the local community safety partnership, but has grown into one of the country’s leading models for helping offenders with serious drug problems to combat addiction. I end by citing an example of good practice which I think is particularly instructive. The Homeshield partnership, run by Suffolk County Council in partnership with community safety, fire, trading standards, district councils and the voluntary sector, is aimed at helping people to access benefits to which they may be entitled. But it triggers referrals to partner organisations about other problems that individuals may experience. That of course underlines the fact referred to by my noble friend Lady Morgan that vulnerable individuals or families typically face not just one problem but a whole series. Getting partners to work together to help to find solutions is absolutely essential. That leads me to two conclusions. The most innovative and effective work is going on in the places where a wide variety of partnerships are able to work together closely, and where individuals have good networks of contacts to drive forward results on the ground. There are many examples from across the country, and often their biggest problem is that government departments are not as joined up in their funding and performance monitoring and assessment programmes as they are. Thus they can face conflicting requirements from different government departments and many layers of bureaucracy, causing frustration and the undermining of performance. These issues need to be addressed. My second conclusion is that I would like to see much more acknowledgment by central government of the great variety of work going on at the grassroots level to promote social inclusion and community cohesion, and the development of much closer working relations with mainstream good practice. In particular, I should like to see civil servants in government departments take more secondments at the local or regional level, and the promotion of a greater interchange of personnel in general. This would help to spread and mainstream good practice more quickly, as well as assist government officials to understand more clearly what obstacles local partnerships and voluntary organisations face, and how they can be helped to deliver government policies even more effectively. I think that much has been done, but I agree with my noble friend Lady Morgan that much more remains to be done.