Last summer's riots in British cities led the prime minister to refer to "broken Britain". On 15 August 2011, David Cameron was cited in the Guardian saying that his personal priority was to "mend our broken society". He continued, "our security fightback must be matched by a social fightback".
What will this social fightback look like? Is it up to government to lead, or can social enterprises seize the initiative? I suggest that evidence indicates early-intervention schemes led by social entrepreneurs can make a difference. Whether we call it "mending broken Britain" or "social inclusion", taking action early is critically important. Excitingly, one early-intervention scheme (EIS) is about to take the ambitious step of going national.
In 2008 the Early Intervention: Great Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens report was published, championing the use of EIS. This report, introduced by Iain Duncan Smith MP and Graham Allen MP, was published through the Centre for Social Justice and The Smith Institute. It pointed out how illogical it was that government interventions, designed to alleviate social exclusion among young people, did not kick in until children had reached adolescence or early adulthood.
It stated that the government needed to try and identify families at risk of social exclusion and to intervene with these families at a much earlier stage. The idea of EIS operating from birth, or even conception, to assist children at risk of social exclusion was put forward, built on evidence from a variety of prior academic and medical studies
One such social enterprise EIS is the Parent Infant Project (PIP), which has been piloted in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and has ambitions to go national. It aims to prevent future social exclusion and familial and societal problems by working with families at risk from the ante-natal stages of a child's life through to the age of two. PIPs aim to support mums (and sometimes dads) who have problems such as post-natal depression, drug and alcohol issues, as well as those that have been victims of abusive relationships. PIPs provide therapies that promote attachment between parents and the baby, and to reduce stress and anxiety in the infant.
The problems associated with poor parent-infant attachment include severely dysfunctional behaviour, inter-generational parenting problems, inability to sustain relationships, increased risk of criminality and poorer life chances. A PIP intervention offers the opportunity to break the generational cycle of social exclusion at a relatively low cost to the tax payer.
At a sell-out conference to be held in Northamptonshire on 18 May, Andrea Leadsom MP, one of the drivers of the PIP in Northamptonshire, will be announcing an initiative to roll out a national network of PIPs structured on social enterprise models. More than 500 experts in early attachment therapies from throughout the UK and Europe will be listening. Earlier, the audience will have heard from speakers Iain Duncan Smith MP and Baroness Susan Greenfield of the University of Oxford, who will stress the importance of effective EIS programmes.
The national network of PIPs will have to trade, to win contracts and operate in a customer-driven environment. They will be supported by Inspire2Enterprise, a new national social enterprise support service developed by the University of Northampton. They have the support of MPs from all parties, the endorsement of the Prime Minister and a solid experiential and research base on which to build. Where there is a need and (crucially) a demand, local social entrepreneurial therapists will be supported to become part of the national PIP network. I am not underestimating the scale and complexity of the challenge that a PIP network will face. However, I am impressed by the ambition, drive and planning that has gone into the initiative to date.
Will social enterprising PIPs mend broken Britain? Perhaps this is too simplistic a question. Will socially enterprising PIPs make a real, positive, life-changing difference to the youngest in our society? My guess is that they will. Social enterprise can and will help lead the social fightback – because they must.
Professor Simon Denny is social enterprise development director at the University of Northampton.
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