With four weeks to go until election day, we are asking all parliamentary candidates to commit to breaking down barriers for those facing multiple disadvantage and social exclusion and ensure that everyone in society realises their full potential.
Specifically, we are asking all parliamentary candidates to commit to the following pledges:
• Prevention: Prioritise tackling the challenges that people face before they escalate.
• Resilience: Ensure that people can access stable and resilient public services, including those delivered by the third sector.
• Support: Consider the needs of and empower those experiencing the greatest levels of disadvantage and social exclusion.
• Equality: Ensure that the gender-specific needs of women are considered across government policy.
Why these pledges?
Prevention
Too often people only become eligible for support when they reach crisis point – both a traumatic experience for the individuals and at great cost to the public purse. Years of funding cuts have weakened our ability to prevent problems from emerging or tackling them before they get worse. We need to embed a preventative mindset in policy and practice to address challenges people face before they escalate and people find themselves embedded in cycles and systems that are hard to move on from.
Resilience
Many public services that our society relies upon are reaching breaking point and urgent action is needed to bring stability and resilience to essential services. This includes the voluntary sector who play an essential role in supporting people when times are tough. It is members of the public, particularly the most vulnerable, who pay the price when services are cut to the bare bones and they cannot get the support they need.
Support
People experiencing challenging times and associated social exclusion are in difficult situations even when the economy is flourishing. When times are hard nationally, they are disproportionately affected and need additional support to bring stability to their lives. We need a support system that prioritises building trusted relationships and empowering people to build their own way out of exclusion.
Equality
Too many of our systems are designed with the needs of men in mind, leaving services inaccessible to women. It is vital that we move away from a one-size-fits-all mentality and take a gender-informed approach to policy and commissioning.
We believe these are things that all candidates can get behind, but without action they will be meaningless.
That’s why we’ve also published our manifesto, Breaking Down Barriers, setting out proposed solutions to the challenges that the next government will face in areas such as welfare, homelessness, violence against women and girls, and addiction.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting a series of blogs digging into these themes in more detail and looking at what the different parties are saying on each issue, or where they remain silent.
