Introduction

In the previous chapter, we discussed the operation of the Employment Service's Wage Subsidy Supported Employment programme that is underpinned by statute and is aimed at disabled people judged to be almost ‘work ready’. Whether ability is measured in terms of relative productivity or benefits status, participation in the Wage Subsidy Supported Employment programme is contingent on being able to survive in open employment with little ongoing support. This chapter explores the operation of a quite different form of supported employment that has developed from grassroots movements and lacks statutory or central government financial support. This version of supported employment, Job Coach Supported Employment, reflects the principle that all citizens have the right to work since this is the key aspect of social inclusion in Western societies. Every individual, it is argued, is capable of working if they wish to do so. However, particularly for individuals with more significant impairments, it is recognised that a considerable amount of support will be required, not just in the initial stages of mastering a job, but possibly on a long-term basis. It is acknowledged that supporting individuals with complex difficulties in a work placement will be expensive, but other forms of support, for example in day centres, are also expensive. In this chapter, we first outline some central principles of Job Coach Supported Employment and then discuss some recent findings on its position in the UK. Subsequently, we use case study material to explore experiences of Job Coach Supported Employment by people with learning difficulties.

Principles of Job Coach Supported Employment

In general, most Job Coach Supported Employment agencies adopt a ‘place, train and maintain’ model. A supported employment placement generally begins with a period of assessment or profiling, so that the keyworker understands the individuals within their social context. The work-related goals of individuals will be placed within their broader life aspirations and their strengths and weaknesses are identified. The person will then be ‘marketed’ to an employer, with whom the person's support needs will be discussed. A keyworker will conduct an analysis of the job to be undertaken and systematic instruction techniques may be used, breaking the task down into component parts and encouraging the person to practice each micro task until it is mastered.

Disabled people, identities and the research process

Research is clearly not a neutral activity, but may be used to support or subvert dominant social discourses. In Oliver's view, research in the area of disability has hitherto been a conservative rather than a radical force. He comments:

In developing a more democratic disability research paradigm, two strands have emerged, participatory and emancipatory research. The distinction between these is not altogether clear; sometimes the terms are used interchangeably and at other times participatory research is seen as a stepping-stone towards emancipatory research. French and Swain (1997), for example, argue that the key difference lies in their contrasting relationship with the social model of disability:

Stalker (1998) summarises the main beliefs of emancipatory and participatory research thus:

Introduction

In earlier chapters, we explored the various positions occupied by people with learning difficulties in relation to lifelong learning in education and the labour market. For the general population, lifelong learning programmes are funded from personal education and employment budgets. For people with learning difficulties, however, lifelong learning is often funded by social or health services. To understand the shape of lifelong learning for people with learning difficulties, it is therefore essential to understand the operation of local social care markets. This, therefore, is the focus of the present chapter.

Current community care policy places a strong emphasis on the principles of normalisation (Stalker et al, 1999b), including an opening up of mainstream daytime opportunities (Scottish Executive, 2000a). In addition a “Close and harmonious working within social work, with other statutory agencies, with the voluntary and private sectors…” is advocated (Scottish Office, 1999, p 9). In this chapter we first analyse community care policies as they developed over the last decade. The nature of contracting arrangements between service purchasers and providers is then explored to identify the locus of power. We finally question the extent to which social care markets are delivering choice and diversity of provision, empowering service users to exercise control over their future life course, through case studies of three adults with learning difficulties in a market town in our rural study area.

Social care markets: purchasers, providers and contracts

The 1990 NHS and Community Care Act placed the responsibility on local authorities to assess individuals’ care needs, design an appropriate package of care and ensure that this was delivered. In the policy guidance document Caring for people (DoH, 1989) the government indicated the way in which local authorities were to effect change. Central to the process was transforming the role of local authorities from service provider to service purchaser. Local authorities were required to stimulate the growth of the independent, voluntary and private sectors, thereby creating a market in service provision that would increase consumer choice, provide better value for money and higher quality services. However, what was created was not an open or pure market but a ‘quasi market’ of care provision (Le Grand, 1991).

Introduction

In Chapter 1 of this book, we set out three key versions of the Learning Society which are in play in official policy talk and are also reflected in services delivered by a range of agencies. These were the human capital, the social capital and the social control versions of a Learning Society. Having explored lifelong learning in relation to post-school education, training, employment and benefits regimes, we consider the extent to which each of these versions of a Learning Society is in evidence and its implications for people with learning difficulties. We conclude by suggesting some more fruitful directions for the Learning Society of the future that might enable it be an inclusive rather than an exclusive force.

The human capital version of the Learning Society

As we suggested earlier, this essentially economic version of the Learning Society has become the dominant model and appears to be capable of uniting, at least at a superficial level, a wide variety of interest groups. Official policy documents routinely assert that investment in human capital is essential to beat off competitors in the global jungle. Thus the introduction to the Scottish White Paper on lifelong learning asserts:

The consequences of this economic justification of lifelong learning are different for different groups. People in work are likely to find growing opportunities for formal and informal learning at work, as initiatives such as Investors in People, the University for Industry and Individual Learning Accounts support individuals in upgrading their skills. Entry to programmes providing employment-orientated skill formation is likely to be restricted to more able individuals who will produce the best economic return on investment.

For people with learning difficulties, however, the consequences of a Learning Society driven by human capital rhetoric are likely to be very restrictive.

Introduction

This book explores the ways in which people with learning difficulties experience the Learning Society, drawing on work conducted as part of the Research Programme The Learning Society: Knowledge and skills for employment which was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council between 1995 and 2000. A central aim of the programme was to understand the diverse constructions of a Learning Society and the implications of placing lifelong learning at the heart of social policy. Our project, entitled The meaning of the Learning Society for adults with learning difficulties, explored the range of education, training and employment opportunities available to people with learning difficulties. Our concern was not only to understand the contexts and experiences of this significant minority but also, through the analysis of the group specifically marginalised in a Learning Society, to understand the nature of that type of society more generally.

The research was carried out in two main phases. Phase One was a study of education, training and employment opportunities for people with learning difficulties in Scotland. Documentary analysis of policy texts was carried out and key informant interviews conducted with representatives of a range of agencies (see Riddell et al, 1997a for a report of this phase of the work). The interviews were carried out, mainly by telephone, in late 1996 and early 1997, hard on the heels of regional reorganisation in Scotland, which created 32 unitary local authorities, each with education and social work functions, in place of the 12 regional authorities. Eight authorities were reluctant to be interviewed because they felt that their policies were still in a state of flux. In addition, six of the 22 Local Enterprise Companies declined to be interviewed because they felt that their policies in relation to people with learning difficulties were insufficiently developed. Interviews were also carried out with informants from Further Education (FE), the Employment Service, Careers Service and the Scottish Office (Inspectors of Social Work and Education). Interviews with ten user and voluntary organisations were also conducted. These organisations were selected to reflect a range of service provision and practice with regard to service planning. In particular, People First Scotland is an organisation of disabled people and AccessAbility describes itself as ‘disability-led’. The aim here was to understand the perspective of user organisations rather than that of professionals.

We now turn to ethnicity and ‘race’. Building on earlier chapters our account rests on the themes that there is difference within difference, and that difference is regulated. Thus diverse individual and group experiences and strategies among minorities are set within broader patterns of difference linked to structural factors which condition ongoing practices of social regulation. In this chapter we touch on diversity and the defining of needs, and note questions about particularism and ownership. Most of our discussion concerns ‘non-white’ minority ethnic people, although certain white groups clearly have also been subject to racist discrimination (notably Irish and Jewish people, some refugees, and gypsies and travelling people).

The first section below provides selected information about housing and black minority ethnic households, noting diversities of experiences alongside continuing commonalities of adverse circumstances. The chapter then turns to selected aspects of ‘human agency’. Black and minority ethnic communities resist racisms and pursue a variety of housing strategies, albeit in difficult economic and political environments. Their achievements have included not only individual successes for households, but also creation of black-run housing organisations. We then comment on policies and practices of government and provider organisations, where it is important to acknowledge change. As well as being affected by general ideas about ‘race’, black and minority ethnic households have been subject to specific regulation through the negative and positive practices of numerous housing and allied institutions. A discussion of housing need follows, covering the potentially contested nature of the concept, its links with security, empowerment and ownership, and issues of ethnic managerialism, particularism and universalism. Finally we draw brief conclusions.

Experiences, preferences and constraints

In reviewing housing experiences we must look not only beyond a simple black/white divide, but also beyond assumptions about broad distinctions between (say) Asians and African/Caribbeans. There have been marked differences between various minority ethnic communities “in terms of household size/structure, tenure patterns, dwelling types, amenity levels and density of occupation” (Ratcliffe, 1997, p 130). Phillips notes that there are “forces for both minority ethnic inclusion and exclusion from competition for economic rewards and social status”, and that these forces “produce different outcomes for different groups and a variable experience within minority ethnic groups according to generation, gender and class” (Phillips, 1998, p 1681).

Housing consumers experience various forms of regulation in the sense that we have been using the term. They encounter ‘gatekeepers’ influencing access to accommodation and are subject to expectations about family and culture. Home-buyers have to meet specific criteria of incomes and health to obtain mortgage finance on reasonable terms. Applicants for renting or for supported or emergency accommodation may come up against rules and officials. A difference between households as perceived by a providing organisation may be a basis for negative or positive discrimination, deterrence or assistance. In effect housing practices help sort people, contributing to differentiation of citizenship as a lived experience. Many activities here – supportive or restrictive – have deep historical foundations, and connect with structural forces, but there are numerous challenges from the grass roots too, sometimes offering alternative discourses about housing rights, needs or citizenship. To understand housing experiences of disabled people, minority ethnic households or women, it is desirable to consider the broad frameworks within which most households are placed. Governmental policies and institutions confirm the status and resources of households, help position them in terms of access to accommodation, designate or classify them, and influence pathways during their housing ‘careers’. Options for individual households are influenced by public policies across all tenures, these policies in turn being linked with particular discourses about property, health, environment, merit, rewards, risk, conditionality, needs and so on.

To explore some of these matters, this chapter reviews practices and their effects. We begin with markets, and then look at ‘non-market’ housing, considering social renting and some competing or complementary concerns of contemporary policy. ‘Private’ housing markets are covered fairly swiftly, since many of their differentiating effects for groups of households are relatively straightforward and predictable, despite the distinctiveness of UK public policies affecting ownership and private renting. A somewhat more elaborate account is needed to explore social rented housing, because the motivations and potential effects of policies and services here have been complex, and perhaps sometimes even contradictory. We draw attention especially to practices and discourses related to social support and needs, to social control and the regulation of tensions, and to participation and citizenship.

It has been demonstrated that housing associations have innovative capacity – a sizeable proportion have lived up to the expectations placed upon them. They have steered their way through a difficult and turbulent environment and now, more than any time previously, need to maintain this capacity and enhance their ability for framebreaking. This is necessary because government agendas are now fast-moving while the expectations of the public are changing: no longer do tenants flock to the doors of the housing office in search of accommodation; the housing officer now needs to search for new tenants. The drivers of innovation now extend beyond government expectations, which has created a climate for public services organisations to present themselves as innovative organisations, and increasingly include market pressures as users exercise choice and private financiers leave their mark. They also extend to the changing nature of the external environment and the ways in which our case-study associations actively engaged with it. In addition leaders were eager to improve performance across a number of dimensions and keen to learn from other contexts. The iterative process of innovation and re-regulation of these new activities by associations, to draw them into a framework where they can be monitored, is clearly seen in our example of housing associations. Associations have responded to changes in their environment and developed a range of innovations which has led the industry regulator to redesign the regulatory framework. It can be argued that this has been designed in such a way that it can bend and flex, going with the flow of the innovations that associations put into practice, rather than snap and shatter as the flow of innovations is resisted. However, in order to achieve this, the control over associations has been increased raising a challenge to future housing association innovation. The style of regulation now seen is more akin to that of the privatised utilities, with a growing emphasis upon economic regulation. This in part reflects the housing associations’ own self-definitions, and their capacity for polymorphism; they increasingly parade themselves as private organisations, but can still display their public and voluntary forms. This final chapter of our study draws out conclusions and makes linkages between the central questions of this book concerning the classification of innovation, the characteristics of innovative organisations and the management of innovation.

Women and men differ in their housing opportunities, resources or strategies, and these differences are to a degree systematic and persistent. Earlier chapters touched on the impact which market relationships and labour market positions have on women's housing, and also referred to the realm of ideas, where expectations about family and respectability have played a part. We explored the diverse meanings and functions of home, where gender can be a highly significant variable. Our task now is twofold. First we summarise key points relevant to an analysis of gender in relation to housing and comment on relationship breakdown, as well as on social landlords and homelessness. Second we offer insights into the specific area of rehousing for women who have experienced domestic violence, drawing on new research. This deserves space below because – despite changing labour market opportunities – women in general are still affected strongly by ideologies or discourses that cast them and men in particular domestic and work roles, and that continue to exert influence on social regulation and the activities of practitioners. Women's difficulties in living with and leaving violent men reflect societal outlooks and a lack of autonomy that have changed only slowly, and entrenched expectations about partnering and childcare, as well as financial constraints. The topic highlights how competing ideas are manifested in daily practice.

As in previous chapters we can observe that there is difference within difference, and that difference is regulated. Experiences and strategies among women are diverse (and perhaps even somewhat polarised), but still set within broader patterns of difference linked to structural factors that condition ongoing practices of social regulation. Although women are “separated by country, class, race, marriage, maternity and a lot more” (Pascall, 1997, p 22), they nonetheless tend to share low pay, limited political voice, and demanding domestic responsibilities. They confront influential patriarchal traditions and practices, and meet resistance to change. There are complex relationships with other patterns or bases of disadvantage, and effective feminist accounts acknowledge these. Disability, racism and class can be set alongside gender in a more general overview of the kind we are working towards in this book, taking account of the manner in which many differences are regulated. In any event, understanding women's circumstances is essential if we are to get to grips with how housing systems operate, how inequalities are sustained, and how areas of social tension are dealt with.

This book brings disability, ethnicity and gender into the centre of an analysis of housing policies and practices. At the same time it offers a distinctive way of looking at welfare arrangements in a complex society. We explore interactions between human agency and institutional power, and examine how ‘difference’ is responded to and regulated in the modern welfare state. Touching on issues ranging from minority ethnic housing needs to domestic violence, we locate specific housing concerns in relation to a larger backcloth of dominant ideas, social changes, and challenges from the grass roots. The book acknowledges the significance of diversity of experiences and of household strategies, but also highlights the persistent influence of longstanding ‘structural’ factors shaping housing choices for many disabled people, minority ethnic households and women. We also try to connect manageable theoretical preoccupations with daily practice and experience, drawing on the record available in UK housing.

Our focus on housing issues is primarily from a social policy standpoint, with comments generally being about social trends and issues rather than matters of building design, physical environment or economic analysis (cf Clapham, Kemp and Smith, 1990). Social policy is not easy to define precisely, because most kinds of public policies have social implications, and the study of social policies overlaps with other fields of enquiry. For practical reasons, our boundaries are generally drawn to exclude analyses of governmental economic management policies, industrial policies, environmental policies, and policies on political processes, although these come into the background of the study. Analysis from a social policy perspective has come to imply an awareness of institutional strategies, rules, values, histories, discourses and practices related explicitly to distributional and household welfare concerns, an acknowledgement of questions of social division, order, conflict and cohesion, and an understanding of policy issues across non-governmental as well as statutory agencies. In looking at questions raised in housing by disability, ethnicity and gender, we are working very much within this social policy tradition. Our discussion also concentrates centrally on housing access, management and consumption rather than production. Policies and practices in construction clearly affect consumers, employees, and wider communities, but we cannot tackle here the housing industry as such.

This book has reviewed ‘difference’ in housing contexts, and touched on relationships with markets, paternalism, inequalities, and discourses about dependencies and economic life. Theoretically-led general analyses of housing policy remain scarce (see Dickens et al, 1985; Kemeny, 1992; King, 1996), and our study has broken new ground. The analysis has messages applicable beyond housing, offering perspectives on the welfare state in general. Experiential diversity can be brought more comprehensively into accounts of welfare systems, but analysts should not be deflected by awareness of differentiation and choice from tackling the big picture. Households vary greatly, but act in contexts which privilege some and substantially disadvantage others in regular and patterned ways. We have used the term difference within difference to locate diversity of household experiences, strategies and identities within persistent broader patterns of differentiation.

To provide stepping-stones between the detail of daily events and the idea of more longstanding structural factors, our book has deployed the term social regulation. This takes form in an ensemble of overlapping mechanisms, practices and influential assumptions through which people's varied lives and plans may be constrained, facilitated or conditioned, and through which difference is responded to, socially constructed, oppressed or celebrated. Many households are helped by institutions in empowering ways, but wealth and labour market status remain crucial for outcomes, alongside degrees of risk and conformity that households represent. Once achieved, the home itself can influence differential access to services and other resources, conferring as well as expressing status (cf Clapham, Kemp and Smith, 1990, pp 61-2). The realm of ideas is important. While competing discourses are propagated, there is a structured selectivity which helps accord some more weight than others (see comments below on property rights). Specific historical circumstances can be crucial. For example, alongside increasing social and spatial polarisation (and weakened labour market ties), discourses about conditionality and social order have gained ground, suggesting growing desires to deter or punish through administrative practices of welfare provision as well as through law and order systems.

As contributors to the social regulation ensemble, housing policies have ambiguous effects, both constraining and facilitating choice, and responding to a variety of participants against a backcloth of differentiations among households in strategies and resources. The role of agency appears here in many important manifestations, including explicit challenges or pressures from the grass roots, individual households’ decisions, and actions by professionals. Earlier in the book we indicated that agency and structure are mutually implicated. It is important to keep in mind what this means in housing, considering how the structural becomes the specific (and vice-versa), and roles that people play in interpreting, confirming and reshaping constraints.

This chapter comments on housing circumstances for disabled people, considers market and non-market provision, discusses universal and inclusive standards, and concludes with observations about change, citizenship and self-management. First, however, we position ourselves in relation to general debates about disabling environments, and emphasise the importance of disabled people's ideas and campaigns.

Disability is understood below as something resulting from persistent devaluing of people with impairments, their exclusion from good incomes and jobs, and lack of concern for their needs in the arrangement of physical spaces and social networks. This perspective derives primarily from advocates of the social model of disability who challenged earlier formulations within medicalised or individualised accounts in which disability was presented as an attribute of particular people deviating from a supposed physical norm (see Barnes, 1994, p ix; Oliver and Barnes, 1998). In very immediate senses individuals feel limitations from an impairment, and physical or sensory impairment may trigger disadvantage in labour markets or in access to aspects of social life. Yet societal responses are also crucial, and varied over time and place, for disability is “culturally produced and socially structured” (Oliver, 1990, p 22). We do not think of disability as located in the individual, as a characteristic defined by a medical condition or functional limitations. Rather, we see it as a product of social and environmental processes which constitute people as disabled.

This is not to deny the importance of impairment or illness, or the diversity of individual feelings about these. Chronic illness may influence daily living, social relationships, and people's sense of who they are. Impairment may bring pain, fatigue, and depression, but also positive attributes, while an individual's sense of difference related to this may be an important part of identity (see discussion in Crow, 1996; Morris, 1991, pp 17-18; cf Allen, 1998, pp 96, 102). We also accept that some people experiencing mental distress or behavioural difficulties might be a worry to others, to a degree independent of societal structures (or the social construction of mental health). In tandem with the social model's use of ‘disability’, therefore, ‘specific impairments’ refers to people's distinctive physical, mental, health or socio-medical attributes, often generating particular preferences or needs, and lying along a continuum on which everyone has a place.