If you read little else on this website, I hope you will at least read this extract from an article by Iain Duncan Smith in the Saturday Daily Telegraph. It describes the problem well and with some data which I had not seen before.

Britain is witnessing a growth in an underclass whose lifestyles affect everyone. Perhaps the reason why most people haven't been aware of the extent of this is because housing policy has, over 20 to 30 years, ghettoised many of these dysfunctional families.

In the Seventies, only 11 per cent of households on the estates weren't working; today barely a third of working-age tenants have full-time work. Less than 15 per cent are headed by a couple with children. Two-thirds are occupied by lone parents, lone men or lone women.

On such estates, few children see a positive father figure, with young men having children by different mothers, with the state covering the cost.

Small wonder that alcoholism rates are high and drug dealers ply their trade in full view of young families. This social breakdown leads far too many young boys into street gangs.

Although gangs are criminal and bound together by harsh discipline, the leader acts as an authority figure and the gang's strong ties and loyalties perversely replicate the family they never had. As gangs clash, residents suffer from the violence and high levels of crime.

These young boys are on their way to a life of crime. You don't have to take my word for it - look at the background of those who as young offenders end up in custody.

Over three-quarters of them are from broken homes, just under half of them experienced violence in the home and half of them have educational levels below an 11-year-old.

Girls suffer too. Many have grown up in dysfunctional families where their mothers had children as teenagers and they have shared the house with a string of "guesting fathers". Too many will repeat the lives of their mothers.

Families like this are much more at risk of abuse than any other. Recent NSPCC research has shown that a child growing in such a family structure is up to six times more likely to suffer abuse, which is why the social services are under growing pressure.

The cases of Baby P and Shannon Matthews have led to demands that more children be taken into care, yet in the past ten years 20 per cent more children have been taken into care. Furthermore, the outcomes for those youngsters are appalling.

Nearly half of all the under-21s in the criminal justice system have been in care, only 12 per cent gain five A-C GCSEs and a third of all homeless people have been in care.

When social services do take the child, too often the young mother goes off and has another child, which will more than likely end up in care as well.

The full article is here.

Here is a link to the Centre for Social Justice report on "housing poverty".

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Housing • Parenting • Welfare benefits

Comments (0) TrackBack (0)