Introduction

For five years, we have been tracking the lives of 200 families in four of the most disadvantaged urban areas in the country; two in East London (West City and East Docks) and two in Yorkshire (Kirkside East and The Valley). We visit the same families every year and record their changing views and experiences about bringing up their children in difficult and unpopular neighbourhoods. We almost invariably speak with mothers, only very occasionally with partners or other relatives.

The four areas were chosen from the 12 representative deprived areas that we are studying more broadly in an attempt to understand the changing fortunes of such places (see Chapter Six of this volume). Three of the four neighbourhoods are rapidly changing, and becoming ethnically far more diverse (half of our families are from a minority ethnic background). The other area is an almost entirely white large council estate in Leeds. The families offer very new and different insights into life in deprived areas. We ask mothers about their children, relatives, friends, work, local services and conditions, community life, race relations, the changes under way and embedded problems. Our questions evolve as the families express interest in explaining particular problems or ideas, hopes or fears. (For further detail about the study and its methodology, see Mumford and Power, 2003.)

As discussed earlier in this volume, shortly after the new government took office in 1997, the Prime Minister announced a new approach to what he called “joined up problems” requiring “joined up solutions” (Blair, 1997b). The government set up a unit directly under the Prime Minister to tackle a relatively new phenomenon, social exclusion (see Chapter Ten). The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) recognised the centrality of area conditions in holding back families and particularly children and young people from opportunities; it advocated a broad set of targets to reduce deprivation within disadvantaged areas and most importantly it recognised the complexities and interlocking problems of the worst areas.

As the range of area initiatives multiplied and hit the ground, there were complaints from local authorities and within Whitehall that ‘initiativitis’ had got out of control, which has led to a scaling back in area-specific programmes.