Society
Deprived cycle
Jef Smith
Sir Keith Joseph has now declared himself in public on a topic which has fascinated him privately since he took responsibility for the personal social services. In a speech to local authority representatives at a conference organised by the Pre-School Playgroups Association, he outlined what he calls "the cycle of deprivation," the insidious process by which the problems of disturbed families reproduce and multiply over generations.
His starting point is that social services resources have to be quite dis proportionately allocated to a relatively small number of highly disorganised families. Sir Keith calls them "problem fa milies," but enlightened opinion has shifted away from that term; it is rather more compassionate and very much more help ful in terms of analysing what to do to regard them as having problems than as just being problems. If the minister can stand my being pedantic, he will refer in future to "multiple problem families " — or, if he likes, mpf's.
A typical mpf consists of unstable and unhappy parents, married young if indeed actually married, frequently parting if not permanently separate, barely coping with the responsibilities of adult life, not very bright, hopelessly immature. A casual observer would probably guess the woman from her appearance to be much older than she is but from her behaviour to be still only a child. The man has had periods of ill health, imprisonment and unemploy ment, often all three. There will be many children, each showing most of the signs o disturbance — delinquency in the boys, sexual precocity in the girls, truancy in both.
In a real way we have the mpf to thank for the establishment of the Seebohm Committee. Casework with these families was pioneered by Family Service Units but as interest in prevention grew a range of statutory workers were necessarily drawn in — probation officers, child care officers, health visitors, medical social workers, care committee volunteers. Early in the sixties a favourite anecdote was of the family visited from a dozen or more agencies. Some rationalisation became essential and when early attempts at low level co-ordination failed, legislation on the basis of Seebohm required the integration oF services. The new generic worker in a social services department may at least not have his advice to a family contradicted by a series of rival visitors, but he has little more than his colleague ten years ago to offer in positive solutions to the clustering of problems around these seemingly hopeless families. What suggestions has Sir Keith to add?
For a start he admits that the issue is wider than the scope of his own ministry, wider than merely the personal, psychological and medical problems of certain parents. He spoke with the approval of colleagues in the Cabinet and recognised that the question is to be tackled through an attack on poverty, poor housing and sub-standard education as much as by an extension of the social services in their more limited definition. He knows too that it is easier to pose the problem than to offer solutions but he has given some indications of the directions in which he is looking for new advances. Significantly he scarcely mentioned casework in a long speech; though a great deal of help can only be brought to families through faceto-face contact and a relationship of trust With a worker, the higher theorisation of dynamic psychology has little to offer towards actually altering these bizarrely distorted patterns of family functioning.
Indeed if Freud has a contribution to make to the problem of the multiple problem family it has been in convincing us of the critical importance of the first five years of a child's life. British health services during this period are good by any international standard, and when a five-yearold goes to school he enters the educational system at probably its most creative point. But long neglect of the social needs of the pre-school child has depressed teachers and social workers alike (and incidentally mystified our European colleagues).
It is less clear what can be done to support parents or to educate them to play their roles more fully. Sir Keith has mastered the research on the transmission of deprivation and there is no doubting his sincerity in wishing to see more experimental work done. Some of his civil servants are said to be less eager to encourage investigation which in the short term at least can only lead to more demands on resources, but the minister is already fixing dates to meet delegations from a wide range of organisations in the early autumn. There are many fruitful directions research on 'the cycle' might explore; I offer just one problem that has puzzled me throughout my social work career. Like any worker with a background in the child care field I have known many multiple problem families and all have conformed roughly to the pattern I outlined. A few, however, differed from the rest in one startling respect — their ability to get help. While most mpf's I've come across were socially isolated if not actively spurned by their immediate neighbours, a minority seemed to have a remarkable capacity for attracting friends. There were always people in the house when one called — often the mothers I met were my clients too — and the children freely brought friends home. Someone was always on hand to help decorate after a move or provide a bit of carpet or help mend the television. Neighbours even lent money, on incredibly poor assurances of repayment. In spite of their many problems such families were often key members of their communities, and if all the sums were done were probably actually in credit in terms of social support and neighbourliness.
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