 debated whether social workers had ‘lost the confidence to campaign on behalf of their clients or speak out to the press about issues’. One audience member pondered how in the 1970s part of the social worker’s role was to understand welfare benefits and activate these for clients, whereas nowadays there seemed no time for this work.
Frank Field MP (Director of CPAG from 1969-79) and Baroness Molly Meacher, social worker and crossbench peer (who ran the CPAG campaign for what became child benefit in 1971-2) were the next joint speakers. Frank argued that politics had to be put at the very centre of the history of the CPAG—as its achievements could not be understood outside of this context. Frank took the opportunity to highlight his current concern that charities are failing to hold the government to account and their campaigning wings have been silenced as charities have ‘effectively been bought’ owing to their dependence on government funding, which has increased hugely with the out-sourcing of services to the private/charity sector. However, this is not so with CPAG, which has never taken government funding.
Moving the discussion back to the past, Molly outlined the important role of high quality research in the history of CPAG. The Family Allowance Campaign for example (where politicians were persuaded to pay funds to the primary carer, generally mothers), was influenced by a study which had identified poverty as a life course problem, as well as research which highlighted the lack of take-up of benefits by those who were entitled to them. More recently, she observed, a study has shown how grotesque inequality has become accepted within society.
Professor Jane Tunstill, social worker and Visiting Professor at SCWRU, explored the relationship between poverty and social work in her talk. She described the ‘critical friendship’ between CPAG and social work and the role of CPAG in helping to promote progressive models of social work (encompassing ideas of class and poverty) rather than previous dominant psychoanalytical approaches which placed blame on individuals themselves. She noted CPAG’s contribution as: consciousness raising (highlighting the link between poverty, inequality and intervention); knowledge transfer and skills building; reframing the knowledge base by reframing the research questions; and advocacy and welfare rights advice. Jane also discussed the role of CPAG in the formation of the Family Rights Group charity which started in 1975 following campaigns to highlight the limitations of the 1975 Children Act, in respect of children and their families.
Successes such as the original Sure Start agenda and the 1999 New Labour pledges to end child poverty in 2020 (which became law in the 2010 Child Poverty Act) were noted as highs. However, current challenges identified by Jane include government abandonment of the internationally acknowledged income-based definition of poverty; scrapping of poverty targets; roll back and changed agenda of Sure Start; the ‘stigmatising’ Troubled Families Programme; the spectre of privatisation of child protection services; and the introduction of the ‘de-professionalising’ Frontline social work training programme.
Finally, CPAG Policy Committee Member Geoff Fimister (who has been associated with CPAG in various capacities since 1971, including as a member of the National Executive Committee/Board of Trustees) discussed the role of social work in welfare rights and anti-poverty strategies. He analysed the role of Welfare Rights Officers in the 1960s in areas such as Tyneside and Newcastle and how they had spread across the UK and some of whom (despite cuts) are still surviving in councils today (often within Housing or Chief Executive departments). These roles were established under different structures within councils and CPAG was highly important in supporting them by providing the information they depended on. This had led to the slightly tongue in cheek comment that CPAG was at one time ‘a book selling business with a pressure group attached to it.’ Geoff described the Wel