Introduction

Establishing the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) in 1997 as part of the Cabinet Office was an early initiative of the Labour government. The brief of the SEU fell into two parts: neighbourhood renewal (considered in Chapter Six of this volume); and countering the exclusion of marginalised groups (considered in this chapter). Up to early 2004, the groups about whom the SEU has produced reports have been as follows:

• • pupils excluded from school or truanting (published in 1998);

• • rough sleepers (1998);

• • teenage parents (1999);

• • 16- to 18-year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) (1999);

• • young runaways (2002);

• • ex-prisoners (2002); and

• • children in care (2004).

Although the rationale for selecting these particular groups is not immediately obvious, some inferences can be drawn from the characteristics that the groups have in common. Five out of the seven are groups of children or young people. A process of exclusion which begins early in life is likely to have long-term consequences for both individuals and for the services which are required to support them. Correspondingly, successful policy interventions for these groups have the potential to reduce significantly social exclusion over a lifetime.

Many of the groups identified are ones whose exclusion is perceived to impose costs on the rest of society; for example, children not in school are associated with petty crime; people sleeping rough may be intimidating or offend the sensibilities of the better off; and teenage parents and their children often need considerable support through social security and social services. This may have contributed to the selection of these groups as targets for the SEU.

A third feature that the groups have in common is that responsibility for each is spread between a number of different government departments and agencies. Providing ‘joined up solutions to joined up problems’ was seen as a key task for the SEU, and indeed, since the SEU did not have an implementation budget of its own, it was entirely dependent on other departments and organisations to pursue the policies it recommended.

This chapter examines New Labour's record on the first three groups listed earlier. For each in turn (the following three sections), the chapter considers the policy context and trends prior to 1997, the targets set and the policies recommended by the SEU and the outcomes.