̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - social policy

Major new policy school at Cambridge set to advance ‘good growth’

fpjl2 — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 09:18:50 +0000

The Bennett School of Public Policy opens this autumn, and is already leading work on two of the most pressing policy problems of our time: implementing AI and revitalising post-industrial regions.

New Cambridge institute to tackle policy challenges in our age of disruption

fpjl2 — Sun, 15 Apr 2018 23:06:35 +0000

A major gift from Cambridge alumnus and philanthropist Peter Bennett has enabled the launch of a groundbreaking new institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge dedicated to researching solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing society in the 21st century.

̽��ֱ��Bennett Institute for Public Policy has been founded to address the new patterns of inequality and social unrest emerging around the globe, while training the policy-makers of tomorrow.

Its researchers will investigate the ways in which scientific or technical expertise and policy choices interrelate, in a world where so many now feel that the economic and political odds are stacked against them.

Led by inaugural Director, Professor Michael Kenny, and the Bennett Professor of Public Policy, economist Diane Coyle, the Institute will combine fundamental research and rigorous analysis with the search for new practical solutions to challenges such as the digital divide, resource scarcity and the need for more equitable growth.

“We live in an age of unprecedented disruption. More and more people are disenchanted with politics, and many feel that the rules of the economic game are rigged. At the same time, technological innovations and breakthroughs in scientific knowledge are gathering speed,” said Professor Kenny.

“Public policy thinking needs to engage much more deeply with the challenges which these trends pose. It is time to set aside the ingrained assumption that there are technical fixes or ready-made solutions to our most intractable problems.”

“We want the new Institute to become one of the primary academic venues across the world for understanding these changes and devising responses to them. It will offer a unique combination of deep research, high-level training and effective policy engagement.”

̽��ֱ��Bennett Institute aims to blend Cambridge’s world-class research in technology and science with analysis of the political dimensions of policy. Based at the Department of Politics and International Studies, it will be launching interdisciplinary research programmes on policy challenges in different parts of the world – from California to Calcutta, as well as in the city of Cambridge itself.

̽��ֱ��Institute is already establishing research projects on the constitutional future of the UK and Ireland post-Brexit and the increasing role of ‘GovTech’ as states grapple with digital technologies.

̽��ֱ��territory linking the knowledge our societies produce with the decisions taken by policymakers is becoming harder than ever to navigate, says Professor Coyle.

“ ̽��ֱ��tensions between expertise and public participation are an unavoidable feature of our complex, technology-powered global world. Universities have a vital civic role to play in this context, ensuring that their accumulated expertise and new knowledge contribute to the development of solutions to significant policy challenges.”

“ ̽��ֱ��trend toward the creation of new independent policy institutes such as the Bennett Institute marks the growing recognition of this responsibility by the academic world. There could not be a more important time to be launching this endeavour.”

Peter Bennett established the Peter Bennett Foundation in 2012 to seek innovative ways to reduce poverty and promote equality. He has a long-standing belief in the role of public policy as the most effective way to reach solutions to major social issues.

He said: “It has long been my vision to see a global institute that can work to address one of the greatest challenges of our age – that for so many of the world’s citizens, the economic and political odds are stacked against them.”

“ ̽��ֱ��Bennett Institute for Public Policy will harness the remarkable research in technology and science at Cambridge with the economic and political dimensions of policy-making. I am confident that under the leadership of Michael Kenny and Diane Coyle, it will be a leading force in achieving sustainable solutions to some of our most pressing global problems.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope said: “This is a very significant launch for Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��world faces a new age of anxiety, marked by the widespread distrust in business-as-usual politics. Cambridge must take a lead in bringing its unique breadth and depth of expertise to respond to social, political and economic conditions. We are enormously grateful for this generous gift from Peter Bennett. I am certain that the Bennett Institute for Public Policy will be transformational.”

Cambridge launched its £2 billion Dear World… Yours, Cambridge philanthropic campaign for the ̽��ֱ�� and Colleges in October 2015. To date more than £1.1 billion has been raised towards the total, including the gift from Peter Bennett.

̽��ֱ��Bennett Institute for Public Policy will address emerging global patterns of inequality and social unrest by offering a unique combination of deep research, high-level training and effective policy engagement.

It is time to set aside the ingrained assumption that there are technical fixes or ready-made solutions to our most intractable problems

Michael Kenny

Alice Donovan Rouse

Demonstration

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Yes

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“Little robots”: behind the scenes at an academy school

fpjl2 — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 09:49:08 +0000

‘Structure liberates’: the ethos behind one of England’s flagship academy schools.

Designed as an engine of social mobility, this school drills ‘urban children’ for the grades and behaviour considered a passport to the world of middle-class salaries and sensibilities.

̽��ֱ��headline-grabbing exam results of this school have led politicians to champion its approach as a silver bullet for entrenched poverty, and ‘structure liberates’ has become the blueprint for recent urban education reform.

̽��ֱ��school’s recipe has now been replicated many times through academy trusts that have spread like “modern-day missionaries” across the nation, says Dr Christy Kulz, a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. Shortly after it opened, Kulz was granted permission to conduct fieldwork in the school, where she had once worked as a teaching assistant. Choosing to anonymise her research, she calls the school Dreamfields.

Her new book goes behind the scenes of life at Dreamfields, and is the only detailed ethnographic account of the everyday practices within this new breed of academy school. “Education has long been promoted as a salve that cures urban deprivation and balances capitalism’s inequalities,” says Kulz, who spent 18 months of observation in Dreamfields, interviewing parents, teachers and students

“ ̽��ֱ��academy programme taps into ‘mythical qualities’ of social mobility: some kind of magic formula that provides equal opportunities for every individual once they are within the school, regardless of race, class or social context.” In 2012, then Prime Minister David Cameron described academies as “working miracles”.

Primarily state funded but run as not-for-profit businesses, sometimes with support from individual philanthropists, academies such as Dreamfields are independent of local authority control and sit outside the democratic process of local government.

'Verbal cane'

̽��ֱ��gospel according to Dreamfields’ celebrated head is described as a “traditional approach”. Kulz says she found a stress-ridden hierarchical culture focused on a conveyer belt of testing under strict – almost military – conditions, and suffused with police-style language of ‘investigations’ and ‘repeat offenders’.

Enforcement comes through what Kulz calls the “verbal cane”. Tongue-lashings administered by teachers regularly echoed around the corridors, and were encouraged by senior staff. One teacher told Kulz that seeing tall male members of staff screaming in the faces of 11-year-olds was “very hard to digest”.

This verbal aggression is heightened by the panoptic surveillance built into the very architecture of the school. All activity is conducted within the bounds of a U-shaped building with a complete glass frontage. Everyone is on show at all times, including staff, who felt constantly monitored and pressured into visibly exerting the discipline favoured by management.

Policing was not confined to within the school gates. Kulz goes on a ride-along with what’s known as “chicken-shop patrol”. Driving around the streets after school, staff members jump out of the car to intervene when children are deemed to be congregating or in scruffy uniforms.

Stopping off at one of the local takeaways is considered a major offence. “Fried chicken represents a ‘poor choice’ that Dreamfields must prohibit in order to change urban culture,” says Kulz. “Simply being caught in a takeaway after school is punished with a two-hour detention the following day.”

Students are also policed through exacting uniform adherence, with a ‘broken-window theory’ approach that sees deviation as opening the door to chaos.

̽��ֱ��smallest rule infraction can be met with a spell in isolated detention. Staff would sometimes go to strange lengths to maintain conformity, she says. Suede shoes were subject to clampdown. Parental suggestions of a karaoke stall at a winter fair were considered far too risky. “There is no room for unpredictability at Dreamfields,” says Kulz. One student who shaved lines into his eyebrows had to have them coloured in by a teacher every morning.

'Cultural cloning'

As fieldwork progressed, Kulz began to notice discrepancies that tallied uncomfortably with race and social background. Black children with fringes, or children who congregated outside takeaways, were reprimanded immediately. White middle-class children with long floppy hair, or gathering en masse by Tesco, were ignored. Teachers troubled by this would hint at it in hushed tones.

“ ̽��ֱ��approach of many academy schools is one of cultural cloning,” says Kulz. “ ̽��ֱ��Dreamfields creed is that ‘urban children’, a phrase used by staff to mean working-class and ethnic minority kids assumed to have unhappy backgrounds, need salvaging – with middle-class students positioned as the unnamed, normative and universal ideal.”

“Black students were consistently more heavily policed in the playground, resulting in many consciously adopting ‘whiter’ styles and behaviours – a tactic that reduced their surveillance.” It is not just children who are driven hard through incessant monitoring. Staff at Dreamfields are subject to ‘teacher tracking’, a rolling system in which student grades are converted into scores, allowing management to rank the teachers – an approach staff compared with salesmen being judged on their weekly turnover.

This pressurised auditing resulted in rote learning to avoid a red flag in the system. “You put a grade in that satisfies the system instead of it satisfying the student’s knowledge and needs,” one teacher confessed to Kulz, explaining his ‘real job’ was not to teach understanding of his subject, but to get students to produce a set product quickly and accurately. One student described himself to Kulz as a “little robot”.

Most teachers exceeded a 48-hour week. ̽��ֱ��majority of staff were young – an average age of 33 – with fewer outside commitments, yet many expressed a sense of exhaustion. “If you’re not in a lesson we are expected to patrol,” one teacher told Kulz. “Every moment of every day is taken up with some sort of duty.” Unlike most schools, Dreamfields has no staff room.

Some staff discussed former colleagues who had suffered burnout or were asked to resign. During interviews, Kulz found conspiracy theories were rife among students because of the number of teachers that “just disappeared”.

Yet Dreamfields was – and still is – fêted by politicians and the media for its undeniably extraordinary exam results: over 80% pass rate at GCSE in an area where this was previously unthinkable. At the time, the school was vastly oversubscribed, with over 1,500 applications for just 200 places.

“Most of the students, parents and teachers were keen to comply to Dreamfields’ regime, despite its injustices. ̽��ֱ��school’s approach was seen as the best shot at securing grades and succeeding in an increasingly precarious economy," says Kulz. "Students, like staff, are trained to be expendable while the ideals of democracy and critical thinking we are allegedly meant to cherish are quashed in the process.”

This model of a disciplinarian school built for surveillance and which teaches market-force obedience has marched ever onward since her time in Dreamfields, says Kulz – arriving at new poverty front-lines such as rundown seaside towns. Yet grassroots resistance to this style of education is increasing. Last year, a recently established academy in Great Yarmouth that forbade “slouching and talking in corridors” had pupils pulled out by parents objecting to the “draconian” rules that are central to the much-imitated Dreamfields playbook.

Kulz believes the grades achieved by these schools – far from universally high – come at a price. “We cannot continue to ignore the links between the testing regimes we put pupils through, the harsh school cultures they create, and the deteriorating physical and mental health of children and young people in the UK.”

‘Factories for Learning: Making Race, Class and Inequality in the Neoliberal Academy’ (2017) is published by Manchester ̽��ֱ�� Press.

New research from the Faculty of Education lifts the lid on an influential academy school, and finds an authoritarian system that reproduces race and class inequalities.

We cannot continue to ignore the links between the testing regimes we put pupils through, the harsh school cultures they create, and the deteriorating physical and mental health of children

Christy Kulz

̽��ֱ��District

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Yes

Cutting welfare to protect the economy ignores lessons of history, researchers claim

tdk25 — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 06:00:14 +0000

Cutting welfare and social care budgets during times of economic hardship is an “historically obsolete” strategy that ignores the very roots of British prosperity, a group of Cambridge academics have warned.

Writing in the leading medical journal, ̽��ֱ��Lancet, a team of researchers argue that squeezing health and welfare spending in order to reduce taxes, and on the basis that these are luxuries that can only be afforded when times are good, overlooks a critical lesson of British history – namely that they are central to the nation’s economic success.

̽��ֱ��authors are all part of a group based at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which is studying the causes of health inequalities and looking at how research in this area can be used to inform policy interventions.

Drawing on recent research, they argue that the concept of a British welfare state, widely thought to have begun after the Second World War, actually dates back to a “precocious welfare system” forged during the reign of Elizabeth I, which was fundamental to England’s emergence as “the most dynamic economy in the world”.

While the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that there will be no further welfare savings during the present Parliament beyond those already announced, the paper is directly critical of the continuation of those existing policies, which have reduced welfare spending overall in the name of economic austerity.

Referring to the statement made by the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, that “you can only have a strong NHS if you have a strong economy”, the authors argue: “ ̽��ֱ��narrow view that spending on the National Health Service and social care is largely a burden on the economy is blind to the large national return to prosperity that comes from all citizens benefiting from a true sense of social security.”

They continue: “There are signs that Theresa May subscribes to the same historically obsolete view. Despite her inaugural statement as Prime Minister, her Chancellor’s autumn statement signals continuing austerity with further cuts inflicted on the poor and their children, the vulnerable, and infirm older people.”

By contrast, the paper argues that a universalist approach of progressively-funded health and welfare spending is an integral part of economic growth, and something that modern states cannot afford to do without. That conclusion is echoed in a new educational film, developed from work by Simon Szreter, Professor of History & Public Policy at Cambridge and a co-author of the Lancet piece.

“We are arguing from history that there needs to be an end to this idea of setting economic growth in opposition to the goal of welfare provision,” Professor Szreter said. “A healthy society needs both, and the suggestion of history is that they seem to feed each other.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the paper traces that feedback loop to the Tudor era, and specifically the Elizabethan Poor Laws in 1598 and 1601. These enshrined in law an absolute “right of relief” for every subject of the Crown, funding the policy with a community tax and applying both through the local Parish.

̽��ֱ��authors say that this not only represented the world’s first social security system, but also made the elderly less reliant on their children for support, increased labour mobility, enabled urban growth and eased Britain’s transition to an industrial economy. ̽��ֱ��system also maintained a level of demand by supporting the purchasing power of the poor when food prices rose.

Rather than stifling Britain’s economy, the paper argues that the system was therefore essential to helping the country to become the most urbanized society in the world, and the world’s leading economy, between 1600 and 1800. Although the population more than doubled during this time, key indicators of prosperity - such as life expectancy - actually improved.

“Overall, it facilitated the most sustained period of rising economic prosperity in the nation’s history,” the authors observe.

̽��ֱ��authors go on to link the economic growth that the nation experienced under the welfare state after 1945 with similar universalist principles of progressively-funded health and welfare provision, arguing that these stimulated a dynamic period of per capita economic growth, and cut the rich-poor divide to an all-time low during the 1970s.

Conversely, they argue that the economy has stagnated when such principles have been abandoned. ̽��ֱ��Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 overhauled the earlier Elizabethan Laws in an effort to prevent abuses of the system that were felt to be draining the pockets of honest taxpayers. Infamously, this involved providing relief through workhouses in which the appalling conditions, seared into social consciousness by authors like Charles Dickens, were so bad that only the truly destitute sought their help.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that there is no evidence that this approach, which came close to criminalising the poor, actually brought about much economic benefit. In fact, British growth rates gradually fell behind the country’s rivals’ after 1870 - and only recovered after 1950, in the postwar decades of the revived, universalist welfare state.

̽��ֱ��authors also point out that to cut welfare budgets because this will relieve taxation on “hard-working families” implies that those who need welfare are somehow unproductive. Just as the Victorian 1834 measures attempted to address a perceived problem with the “idle poor”, current strategies often dub benefits claimants, directly or indirectly, as “scroungers”.

“ ̽��ֱ��interests of the poor and the wealthy are not mutually opposed in a zero-sum game,” the authors conclude. “Investment in policies that develop human and social capital will underpin economic opportunities and security for the whole population.”

̽��ֱ��paper, Health and welfare as a burden on the state? ̽��ֱ��dangers of forgetting history is published in ̽��ֱ��Lancet.

Amid ongoing welfare cuts, researchers argue that investment in health and social care have been integral to British economic success since 1600.

There needs to be an end to this idea of setting economic growth in opposition to the goal of welfare provision. ̽��ֱ��suggestion of history is that they seem to feed each other.

Simon Szreter

Peter Higginbotham via Wikimedia Commons

Dinner time in St Pancras Workhouse, London, 1911. Workhouses, established under the Poor Law Amendment Act, were part of a Victorian programme that cut universal welfare support and stigmatised many poor people as “unproductive”.

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Yes

Body-worn cameras associated with increased assaults against police, and increase in use-of-force if officers choose when to activate cameras

fpjl2 — Tue, 17 May 2016 08:10:07 +0000

New evidence from the largest-yet series of experiments on use of body-worn cameras by police has revealed that rates of assault against police by members of the public actually increased when officers wore the cameras.

̽��ֱ��research also found that on average across all officer-hours studied, and contrary to current thinking, the rate of use-of-force by police on citizens was unchanged by the presence of body-worn cameras, but a deeper analysis of the data showed that this finding varied depending on whether or not officers chose when to turn cameras on.

If officers turned cameras on and off during their shift then use-of-force increased, whereas if they kept the cameras rolling for their whole shift, use-of-force decreased.

̽��ֱ��findings are released today across two articles published in the European Journal of Criminology and the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

While researchers describe these findings as unexpected, they also urge caution as the work is ongoing, and say these early results demand further scrutiny. However, gathering evidence for what works in policing is vital, they say.

“At present, there is a worldwide uncontrolled social experiment taking place – underpinned by feverish public debate and billions of dollars of government expenditure. Robust evidence is only just keeping pace with the adoption of new technology,” write criminologists from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and RAND Europe, who conducted the study.

For the latest findings, researchers worked with eight police forces across the UK and US – including West Midlands, Cambridgeshire and Northern Ireland’s PSNI, as well as Ventura, California and Rialto, California PDs in the United States – to conduct ten randomised-controlled trials.

Over the ten trials, the research team found that rates of assault against officers wearing cameras on their shift were an average of 15% higher, compared to shifts without cameras.

̽��ֱ��researchers say this could be due to officers feeling more able to report assaults once they are captured on camera – providing them the impetus and/or confidence to do so.

̽��ֱ��monitoring by camera also may make officers less assertive and more vulnerable to assault. However, they point out these are just possible explanations, and much more work is needed to unpick the reasons behind these surprising findings.

In the experimental design, the shift patterns of 2,122 participating officers across the forces were split at random between those allocated a camera and those without a camera. A total of 2.2 million officer-hours policing a total population of more than 2 million citizens were covered in the study.

̽��ֱ��researchers set out a protocol for officers allocated cameras during the trials: record all stages of every police-public interaction, and issue a warning of filming at the outset. However, many officers preferred to use their discretion, activating cameras depending on the situation.

Researchers found that during shifts with cameras in which officers stuck closer to the protocol, police use-of-force fell by 37% over camera-free shifts. During shifts in which officers tended to use their discretion, police use-of-force actually rose 71% over camera-free shifts.

“ ̽��ֱ��combination of the camera plus the early warning creates awareness that the encounter is being filmed, modifying the behaviour of all involved,” said principal investigator Barak Ariel from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“If an officer decides to announce mid-interaction they are beginning to film, for example, that could provoke a reaction that results in use-of-force,” Ariel said. “Our data suggests this could be what is driving the results.”

̽��ֱ��new results are the latest to come from the research team since their ground-breaking work reporting the first experimental evidence on body-worn cameras with Rialto PD in California – a study widely-cited as part of the rationale for huge investment in this policing technology.

“With so much at stake, these findings must continue to be scrutinised through further research and more studies. In the meantime, it’s clear that more training and engagement with police officers are required to ensure they are confident in the decisions they make while wearing cameras, and are safe in their job,” said co-author and RAND Europe researcher Alex Sutherland.

Ariel added, “It may be that in some places it’s a bad idea to use body-worn cameras, and the only way you can find that out is to keep doing these tests in different kinds of places. After all, what might work for a sheriff’s department in Iowa may not necessarily apply to the Tokyo PD.”

Preliminary results from eight UK and US police forces reveal rates of assault against officers are 15% higher when they use body-worn cameras. ̽��ֱ��latest findings, from one of the largest randomised-controlled trials in criminal justice research, highlight the need for cameras to be kept on and recording at all stages of police-public interaction – not just when an individual officer deems it necessary – if police use-of-force and assaults against police are to be reduced.

It may be that in some places it’s a bad idea to use body-worn cameras, and the only way you can find that out is to keep doing these tests in different kinds of places

Barak Ariel

Screenshot of footage from a police body-worn camera

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Yes

Areas of Britain most affected by ‘bedroom tax’ are hardest to downsize in, research finds

fpjl2 — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 11:38:30 +0000

Research commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) on the implementation and effects of housing benefit cuts for those working-age tenants judged to have ‘spare’ bedrooms in social housing has been released today.

Part of the Welfare Reform Act of 2012, the cuts in housing benefit – termed the Removal of Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS) by the DWP, and dubbed by some as the ‘Bedroom Tax’ – has proved divisive, leading to public protests throughout the country. ̽��ֱ��policy impacts on around half a million households in the UK.

̽��ֱ��latest report is the second and final piece of research into the impact of the RSRS by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Centre for Housing and Planning Research, in association with Ipsos Mori. Commissioning the research was a condition imposed by the House of Lords for passing the Welfare Reform bill. An interim report of Cambridge research was published by the DWP in July 2014.

̽��ֱ��new report, which brings the analyses up to November 2014 to cover the first twenty months of RSRS implementation, shows a drop in affected households of 14.2% during that time – from 547,000 to 465,000 – with the greatest reduction in London.

Landlord surveys suggest that between policy enactment in April 2013 and autumn last year up to 45,000 had downsized within the social sector – no more than 8% of those affected by RSRS. A further 87,000 affected claimants were still seeking to downsize in November 2014.

‘High pressure’ areas such as London and the South East, where overcrowding is a major issue and space is a premium, have the lowest number of tenants affected by the RSRS and the highest rates of successful downsized rehousing.

Researchers say this is mainly down to the types of housing stock prevalent in these areas: more one-bed properties within local authorities, and more tenants available to swap with overcrowded families, which may ultimately have a ‘positive knock-on effect’ in such areas.

However, in much of the rest of the UK, particularly areas such as Wales and the North East of England where overcrowding is not such a problem, there is a gulf between the size of households and that of available social housing stock: a dearth of much needed one-bed properties and a surplus of three-bed properties, the hardest to let under the RSRS.

“While research found similar rates of registration for downsizing, it’s much harder for some tenants to downsize than for others,” said Anna Clarke, co-author of the report from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy.

Under the RSRS, children under the age of ten are expected to share a room. Those of the same gender under 16 are also expected to share. Pensioners, however, the group most likely to ‘under-occupy’ according to research, are exempt from the cuts.

Clarke points out that to be correctly occupying a three-bed property, for example, a family would need three children or two different gendered children over ten.

“Rehousing would normally be within a local authority, so the problem is compounded in areas with limited types of property. Some areas have stock consisting largely of suburban council estates full of three-bed houses. Yet most people at the point of applying for housing are single, or young families with one or two small children, and so would be considered to be under-occupying a property that size,” Clarke said.

Many local authorities told researchers there are not enough one-bed properties for single people and childless couples who need a home, particularly now they are competing with downsizers since the RSRS. ̽��ֱ��research found that social landlords are often reluctant to put people into shared housing, seeing it as a retrograde step.

“There is not much hope of finding a smaller property,” one local advice agency told researchers. “This week there is one one-bedroom flat available on the CBL system, and there are 120 bids on it.”

Young people – particularly single young people – will struggle the most to access social housing as a result, says Clarke. She recently completed research for the charity Centrepoint showing that a quarter of 16-24 year olds in the UK have experienced ‘unsafe homelessness’, sleeping in cars and sofa-surfing as a result of having nowhere to go.

“Access to homes for young people is getting harder in every direction: the cost of owning, demands on private renting. ̽��ֱ��RSRS restrictions are another barrier,” said Clarke.

While the majority of households prioritise their rent and have budgeted for the RSRS, and the report suggests landlords have been largely successful in transitioning tenants, the evidence shows that many of those affected are struggling.

̽��ֱ��research found that 76% of those still affected by the RSRS in 2014 reported cutting back on food, and 46% cutting back on energy use, in order to pay the shortfall. “That £60 a month I have to pay (RSRS) would cover food for two weeks or it would mean I could keep the house warm. It just feels like I’ve had two weeks of money taken off of me,” one affected tenant told researchers.

A quarter said they had to borrow money, mostly from friends and family, but at least 7% cited lenders such as payday loans. Around 40% of claimants reported currently being in arrears on their rent.

Some parents were forced to cut back on activities with their children, which they found upsetting. “I panic about struggling to pay for things… We don’t spend any money at Christmas,” said an affected claimant.

“ ̽��ֱ��RSRS affects a third of working-age tenants on housing benefit – a tenth of the whole social sector. This is a huge amount of people affected compared to other welfare reforms such as the benefit cap, which – thus far – has been tiny in comparison,” said Clarke.

Local authorities have a resource to help those most in need, often in the form of one-off payments known as Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP). ̽��ֱ��Government made substantial increases to funding allocation to local authorities for DHP, and the researchers found that this mitigated some of the initial hardship during implementation of the RSRS, with 23% of those still affected in 2014 having received some form of DHP.

However, the future allocation of DHP beyond April 2016 is uncertain as yet, and many local authorities were concerned that, with pressure on finances, it would be reduced.

In Scotland, it’s a very different picture. ̽��ֱ��Scottish Parliament is strongly opposed to the RSRS, but currently lacks the power to opt out, so has topped up DHP funding to completely ameliorate the effects of the policy – indicating clearly to landlords that all tenant shortfalls are to be subsidised using DHPs.

Consequently, to all intents and purposes, the RSRS is not practically in effect in Scotland, says Clarke, although Scottish landlords still have to ensure that all tenants have the correct DHP paperwork.

One of the Government aims was to incentivise people to work through the RSRS, but researchers found no evidence of this. While a tiny percent – three percent overall – had found work, an almost equal amount had lost it. “Many said they were actively seeking work in response to the RSRS, but they don’t seem to be finding it,” said Clarke.

̽��ֱ��researchers didn’t find much evidence of empty housing stock, as some had feared. While 42% of landlords reported difficulties in letting some properties because of the RSRS, Clarke says this would appear to translate to landlords looking harder for tenants – allocating larger properties to those in less urgent need of housing, or through websites and letting agents – as the overall proportion of vacant properties appears to have changed little.

Overall the research concludes that landlords have also been largely successful in transitioning people to the RSRS, the impact has been manageable and people prioritise their rent, says Clarke. But this comes at a cost to tenants.

“Landlords aren’t going bust. There aren’t great swathes of empty houses across England, or enormous rent arrears causing mass evictions. But that’s not the same as saying the impact for individual tenants is manageable, and the evidence is that many people are really struggling as a result of this policy,” said Clarke.

“Most people can’t downsize, or move away from families and schools, or suddenly find work after years of looking. So they just have to keep cutting back their spending. And people on benefits don’t have a lot of spare cash beyond paying for the essentials in life.”

Read the full report on the DWP's website here.

Research commissioned by government following housing benefit reforms finds increase in tenants self-selecting to downsize, but the areas hardest hit by reform are those least equipped with appropriate housing stock. Researchers found households increasingly cutting back on essentials such as food and heating to make up benefits shortfall.

Access to homes for young people is getting harder in every direction: the cost of owning, demands on private renting. ̽��ֱ��RSRS restrictions are another barrier

Anna Clarke

markus spiske

Newcastle - large housing estate

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Yes

A quarter of young people in the UK have experienced ‘unsafe’ homelessness, finds study

fpjl2 — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 12:34:48 +0000

New research shows that 26% of young people aged 16-24 have had to sleep in an “unsafe place” due to homelessness, such as in a car, a car park, a tent in a public space, or on the streets — amounting to an estimated 1.4 million young people (one in six) who have slept rough or unsafely in just the last year, with just under 300,000 doing so on any one night.

Around 83,000 homeless young people have been accommodated by local authorities or homeless services across the UK over the last year, according to a new study from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR). ̽��ֱ��charity Centrepoint, who commissioned the research, say that this figure is more than three times greater than the statutory homeless figures as compiled and recorded by the Department of Communities and Local Government.

Around 35,000 young people are in homeless accommodation at any one time across the UK, with hostels found to be almost always full or oversubscribed. Scotland assists the large majority of young people via homelessness legislation that requires local authorities to record all homeless people who approach them, even if they are not in a ‘priority need’ group.

Elsewhere in the UK, young people are more commonly assisted without a formal homelessness assessment. Official homelessness statistics outside Scotland only record the number of ‘priority need’ young people local authorities have a statutory duty to house, such as young parents or under-18s. Centrepoint say that thousands of young people who do not fit the narrow categories go unrecorded as a result, even if they have been rough sleeping.

̽��ֱ��research team analysed data collected from local authorities throughout the UK, and ComRes conducted a survey of over 2,000 young people that was then weighted to reflect the population at large.

“Our research drew on data from a range of data sources, and filled in the gaps by speaking to staff hostels and homeless services in a sample of 40 local authorities throughout the UK. This enabled us to gain a more comprehensive picture of the numbers who were using homeless services than is possible from the recorded data alone,” said Anna Clarke, a senior researcher at CCHPR in the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Land Economy.

̽��ֱ��research also aimed to get insight into the ‘hidden homelessness’ of sofa surfing among young people: crashing on the sofas of friends or family when they have nowhere else to stay.

One in five have had to sofa surf during the last year, with 16% of all young people having done so for over a week, and 4% for over three months. In total, a third of young people said they had had to sofa surf at some point in their lives. ̽��ֱ��most common reasons given were: leaving a negative home environment or having parents unable or unwilling to house them. Relationship breakups and tenancy endings were also cited as common causes of sofa surfing.

Young people who had been evicted for rent arrears spent the longest time having to sofa surf — an average of ten weeks over the past year. Sofa surfing was more common for men, those without British citizenship, and young people who have been in care or had a foster worker as a child.

“Successive governments have been making policy in the dark as they have failed to grasp the sheer scale of youth homelessness in the UK,” said Balbir Chatrik, Centrepoint’s Director of Policy.

“Young people typically find themselves facing homelessness through no fault of their own. As a society we owe them a national safety net devised from more than just guess work,” she said.

̽��ֱ��team also looked at changing housing pressures for young people across the UK, analysing census data from 2001 and comparing it to 2011 to see changes in overcrowding in households. While overcrowding in both Scotland and Northern Ireland had dropped over that ten year period, in the rest of England and Wales overcrowding had gone up by around 3%, with the highest increase of 5.8% seen in London, indicating the growing pressure on housing in particular in London.

“This research found higher numbers of young people experiencing homelessness than we had ever expected, and we’d very much like to explore the issue further to see if these findings can be replicated,” said Clarke, who led the research.

“ ̽��ֱ��research has highlighted the risks of relying on administrative data and rough sleepers’ counts for quantifying something that by its nature does not necessarily bring people into contact with those who collect the data,” she said.

“As we await a new budget that’s likely to contain substantial cuts to welfare, I think the research also draws attention to just how precarious the housing situation of so many young people already is.”

Read the Executive Summary here.

Read the Full Report here.

Inset image: London Homeless by Jon (CC: Att-NC)

A new study finds the numbers of young people being accommodated by local authorities or homeless services across the UK to be over three times higher than those recorded by the Government, and highlights the ‘hidden homelessness’ of those forced to sleep on sofas of friends or relatives as they have nowhere else to stay.

As we await a new budget that’s likely to contain substantial cuts to welfare, I think the research also draws attention to just how precarious the housing situation of so many young people already is

Anna Clarke

Mjk23

Homeless man in tunnel

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Mandatory arrest in domestic violence call-outs causes early death in victims

fpjl2 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:56:56 +0000

New research from a major ‘randomised’ US crime study conducted 23 years ago finds that domestic violence victims whose partners were arrested on common assault charges – mostly without causing injury – were 64% more likely to have died early, compared to victims whose partners were warned but not removed by police.

Among African-American victims, arrest increased early mortality by a staggering 98% – as opposed to white victims, whose mortality was increased from arrest by just 9%.

̽��ֱ��research also found that employed victims suffered the worst effects of their partners’ arrests. Employed black victims with arrested partners suffered a death rate over four times higher than those whose partner received a warning, which is given at the scene and does not create a criminal record. No such link was found in white victims.

̽��ֱ��vast majority of victim deaths following the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment were not murders, accidents or suicides. ̽��ֱ��victims died from common causes of death such as heart disease, cancer and other internal illnesses.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors say that causes are currently unknown but such health impacts are consistent with chronic stress that could have been amplified by partner arrest. They call for a “robust review” of UK and US mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence cases.

“It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be,” said Professor Lawrence Sherman from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology, who authored the study with his colleague Heather M. Harris from ̽��ֱ�� of Maryland.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that there has never been a fair test of the benefits and harms of so-called ‘positive action’ policy in the UK means that British police can only be guided by US evidence. That evidence clearly indicates more death than life results in at least one large sample.”

“If the current policy is to be continued in the UK, the moral burden of proof now lies with those who wish to continue this mass arrest policy.”

̽��ֱ��findings will be announced in the US today and presented in the UK this Wednesday at the winter meeting of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing. They will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

Previous studies have shown post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) to be prevalent in victims of domestic violence, and that low but chronic PTSS has been linked to premature death from coronary heart disease and other health problems. ̽��ֱ��authors observed that the impact of seeing a partner arrested could create a traumatic event for the victim, one that raises their risk of death. An arrest may cause more trauma in concentrated black poverty areas than in white working-class neighbourhoods, for reasons not yet understood.

̽��ֱ��exact cause of these surprising results still remains a ‘medical mystery,’ say the study’s authors . But, whatever the explanation, the harmful effects of mandatory arrest poses a challenge to policies that have “been on the books” in most US states and across the UK for decades, they say.

“ ̽��ֱ��evidence shows that black women are dying at a much higher rate than white women from a policy that was intended to protect all victims of domestic violence, regardless of race,” said Sherman. “It is now clear that a pro-arrest policy has failed to protect all victims, and that a robust review of these policies is urgently needed.”

“Because all the victims had an equal chance of having their partners arrested by random assignment, there is no other likely explanation for this difference except that it was caused by seeing their partners arrested.”

̽��ֱ��Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment took place between 1987 and 1988, with support from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Department of Justice. Sherman, who led the study, described it as “arguably the most rigorous test ever conducted of the effects of arrest”.

̽��ֱ��experiment enrolled 1,125 victims of domestic violence whose average age was 30 years. Each case was the subject of an equal probability ‘lottery’ of random assignment. Two-thirds of the suspects were arrested with immediate jailing. One-third received a warning at the scene with no arrest. In 2012-13, Sherman and Harris searched state and national records for the names of every one of the victims.

̽��ֱ��record search showed that a total of 91 victims had died. Of these, 70 had been in the group whose partners were arrested, compared to 21 whose partners had been warned. This translated into 93 deaths per 1,000 victims in the arrest group, versus 57 deaths per 1000 in the warned group. For the 791 black victims (who were 70% of the sample), the rates were 98 per 1,000 for arrest, versus 50 per 1,000 for the warned group.

“These differences are too large to be due to chance,” Sherman said. “They are also too large to be ignored.”

Over 100,000 arrests are made each year in England and Wales for domestic abuse, with most cases not proceeding to prosecution. ̽��ֱ��cost is substantial, at fifteen to twenty per cent of all arrests police make. Sherman, who has long-campaigned for ‘evidence-based’ policing, said that the “only way proof can be attained is for one or more UK police agencies, or perhaps the College of Policing, to conduct the same experiment that the Milwaukee Police undertook in 1987-88”.

Cambridge criminologist follows up on landmark US domestic violence arrest experiment and finds that black victims who had partners arrested rather than warned were twice as likely to die young. Researchers call for UK police to conduct similar experiments so that arrest policy can be based on evidence.

It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be

Lawrence Sherman

Screenshots from TV report on the original Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment that took place in 1987-88

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