two - Family support and the Coalition: retrenchment, refocusing and restructuring

Summary

Introduction

The scope and make-up of welfare state support for families with children are controversial social policy issues in the British context. However, under the former Labour government, concerns about childhood disadvantage and family functioning moved up the policy agenda. In turn, Labour invested in more universal and targeted family support provision and extended state intervention in childhood and childrearing. Economic austerity measures, though, and the establishment of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government in May 2010 constitute new policy contexts. After 18 months of Coalition government, this chapter examines the implications for, and recent developments in, family support and child well-being policies.

The chapter employs the concept ‘family support’ as a short-hand term to refer to a broad range of social policies and provisions that seek to assist families in caring for and raising children. These include financial support measures, parental leaves, childcare services, child welfare services, parent education and parenting support initiatives, childhood and family social interventions, and specialist family support services. Beyond this broad definition, there is a need to recognise the significance of informal family support and distinguish between different types of support and services for parents, children and families. Further, the analysis takes on board critical perspectives about ‘care and control’ dynamics in family support and problems with notions of ‘family’ (Frost et al, 2003). It examines the scope of family policies and the way child and family policies pursue wider socio-economic objectives and seekto uphold and enforce family responsibilities for children, social care and social reproduction.

The chapter considers the Coalition's evolving approach and early policies in three stages. First, the discussion reflects on the Coalition's inheritance from the Labour years. Second, the chapter considers the Coalition's founding Programme for government published in late May 2010 (HM Government, 2010). This combined elements of the Conservative Party's ‘smaller state, bigger society’ 2010 election campaign and the Liberal Democrat's criticisms of Labour's record on civil liberties, public service reform and social mobility (Conservative Party, 2010; Liberal Democrat Party, 2010). The Coalition's Programme for government set out a radical programme of public expenditure cutbacks and a new era of welfare state restructuring (HM Government, 2010).