The National Indices of Multiple Deprivation use a weighted score to determine the services a community needs to positively impact the lives of its members. They are based on income; employment, health deprivation and disability; education, skills and training; barriers to housing and services; crime and disorder and living environment.
In 2003 I began what was to be more than two years of immersion into a project to try and lift the IMD figures for the London Borough that scored the worst 10% of the most deprived areas in England and Wales: Thamesmead. Situated on the south bank of the river, Thamesmead was built at the end of the 1960s and is made mostly of tower blocks and poverty.
It’s where Clockwork Orange was filmed. I thought it was where hope went to die.
Our project was to try and regenerate community groups (‘building social capital’ – christ I hate that phrase) with targeted funding. I led a team of four, working out of a manky Council building 5 miles from Thamesmead. It was a slow trudge of a thing. We were hopelessly under-equipped and the meagre triumphs seemed pointless in comparison to the magnitude of what we couldn’t do.
Now, I am grateful for all of it – especially the perspective it has given me; any technology or business process change seems doable in comparison.
I learnt that:
- generational poverty takes many many times longer to impact as you think it might
- neglect of young children damages their soul in a way that never fully heals
- the odds are stacked against parents who were never parented but everyone wants more for their children
- poverty leaves people feeling powerless; sometimes this turns to a determination to get out by any means necessary (love), sometimes this means anger, criminality, alcohol and drug abuse (fear)
- when you cannot connect to yourself, it is very hard to connect to your family, your community
- social services, health care providers, council housing, probation, drug and alcohol services are funded and their success measured, on a short term basis
- getting out of poverty usually takes long term, expensive, structured support
- it doesn’t matter what political party is in charge: the issues are complex and messy, the solutions probably will be too
- the numbers of people that need help, far outweigh the services available
- the people that work in community services, mental health, probation don’t do it for the money
- they also have the blackest humour and the biggest capacity for love I have ever seen in a professional setting
- everyone wants to be seen, to matter, to be loved.
Watching images of my home city burning, I am struck by how lost and angry and sad these (mostly) young people are. They live in the poorest areas of London and they are pissed off with their lives. Holding them responsible for the violence and criminal behaviour is the first part of the process; but we need to go deeper than that to understand what triggered it in the first place. The conversation has started.
A riot is the language of the unheard ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Comments
trackbacks
But Sarah, not all poor people, not all people with negelected childhoods, not all people with poor health or mental stae go out and loot, burn and destroy other people’s property. So long as we don’t end up going down the path of why it is our fault and not theirs.
sas Replied:
i am not saying that poverty leads to criminality. i am suggesting that the causes of the current situation are more complex than just opportunistic thuggery and theft.
I am trying to understand the reasons underneath this behaviour – which is appalling and hurtful and unnacceptable – but people who are connected to their lives and communities don’t set them on fire.
that was, of course, poor health or mental STATE.
People who are cared for within their communities don’t set them on fire.. Connected, cared for (coddled, some might say?) Everything that you said is true, and until the people in power realize that you can’t just expect people in the most desperate situations to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” as it is so common to hear in America, those people will lash out sooner or later.
I read Penny Red’s post and just nodded and nodded – sadly. It’s not the right thing to do, the rioting. But guess what? We ARE listening now.
sas Replied:
Thanks for stopping by Cheney – yes that bootstraps thing is hard to hear isn’t it? I find it especially difficult to hear it from our lovely Conservative (Republican) politicians who go on about the sense of entitlement. Our PM, serval cabinet members are the Mayor of London were all at school together and some were members of the Bullingdon Club. This dining club was notorious for getting completely drunk and wrecking restaurants.
I’ve just finished Paul Auster’s new book ‘Sunset Park’ the undertones of poverty are stark.
you write articulately and insightfully Sas. I grew up with kids who were disadvantaged and could only glimpse, through what i gleaned about their lives how difficult it was for them, babysitting siblings instead of doing homework and playing, no money for trips, chaotic family lives… my father insisted that these kids had the same chances as i did – we went to the same school, listened to the same teacher and i struggled to tell him why it really wasn’t they mythical kiwi level playing feild… it is partly because the disconnection feels to me like it is almost at a cellular level – disconnected from land, traditions, social structure… there is so little to pin the self on to… much of the damage here in Aotearoa is turned internally (as is the kiwistoic way) drugs, alchohol… but there is epic scale damage going on nonetheless… i send blessings to all those suffering in the UK…. and here
sas Replied:
I remember the ‘level playing field’ well. And yes there is a heart-breaking amount of poverty back home. I remember being really horrified when I went home a few years ago, at the news reports of violence against children.
I drove past Shepard’s Bush Green today and there was a massive community festival going on – music, food, stalls. There was a high police presence but the atmosphere was joyful.