Social Networks: their role in addressing poverty
| Title | Social Networks: their role in addressing poverty |
| Author(s) | Asif Afridi |
| Organisation | Birmingham Race Action Partnership for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation |
| Date | March 2011 |
| No. of pages | 33 |
| Key words | social networks; poverty; coalition; public spending cuts; social isolation; mentoring; third sector; inequality |
| Description | ‘Social networks’ – the ties between individuals or groups – are receiving more attention in public policy discourse as people are encouraged to help each other at a time of austerity and the Coalition Government’s emerging ‘Big Society’ ideas. Evidence and ideas are needed to ensure that strategies intended to do more with fewer public resources do not have a negative effect on the most vulnerable. |
| Select quotations | “Social isolation is a mounting problem, and recent research by the Cabinet Office found that around 2.9m people in Britain say that they lack someone to listen, someone to help in a crisis, someone to relax with, someone who appreciates them, or someone to count on to offer comfort.” “…there is little evidence to suggest that poverty can be ‘solved’ by participation in social networks.” “(Polly Toynbee in a 2011 Guardian article) estimates that so far the voluntary and community sector has lost sources of income totalling some £4.5 bn. This is money that has previously helped pay for the delivery of local services, including children’s centres, elderly visiting, youth work and family support.” “Where social networks do help people in poverty, there is no short cut or substitute for the kind of state-funded investments that have helped people to capitalise on the social networks they have (training, financial support and effective equality practice).” “Would it not be useful to assess providers of those services in terms of whether they had helped people to build and use informal contacts so that they could more easily secure jobs (rather than placing unemployed people only in touch with other unemployed people)?” |
| Link | www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/poverty-social-networks-full.pdf |
