Family Hubs and the vulnerable care ecologies of child and family welfare in austerity

Disney, Tom, Crossley, Steve, King, Hannah, Phillips, Josie, Robson, Ian and Smith, Roger (2023) Family Hubs and the vulnerable care ecologies of child and family welfare in austerity. Geographical Journal. ISSN 0016-7398 (In Press)

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12505

Abstract

This article takes an ecological approach to examine the legacies of austerity for local authority welfare systems in England and the implications for families seeking to use these services. Programmes of Early Intervention or Early Help that promote ‘resilience’ amongst marginalised families and reduce future dependency upon state services have been advocated consistently in the UK, currently intensifying with a period of welfare retrenchment and restructuring. Many programmes and approaches being promoted prioritise a discourse of individual or familial responsibility and seek to deflect attention away from structural and environmental changes that have taken place. We explore local authority family and child support services as relational care practices that have been fundamentally reshaped through austerity, and in doing so we seek to shift the conversation from individual responsibility to systemic and collective vulnerabilities. Drawing on the concept of ‘care ecology’ to conceptualise local authority Early Help services as ‘carescapes’, we focus specifically on the changing context of ‘Family Hubs’, and the fragmented nature of service provision. As with any ecosystem, care ecologies are constituted by interconnected and interdependent actors, processes and systems. Damage to them produces unintended consequences which exacerbate underlying ‘vulnerabilities’. We explore this as a legacy of austerity, noting that this has resulted in forms of socio-spatial distancing from care provision for families, disrupting protective networks and support systems. We argue that local authority support services would be better focused on systemic and collective vulnerabilities rather than individual responsibilities in order to provide meaningful support to families.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding information: Institute for Local Government
Uncontrolled Keywords: austerity, care, Early Help, Family Hubs, Family Support, vulnerability
Subjects: L400 Social Policy
L500 Social Work
L700 Human and Social Geography
Department: Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing
Depositing User: Elena Carlaw
Date Deposited: 03 Jan 2023 14:42
Last Modified: 31 Jan 2023 09:00
URI: https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/51030

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