Hit or miss?

Giving evidence before the Commons Education Select Committee, Alan Milburn, the government's preferred candidate for chair of the soon-to-be Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission, suggested that there was not "snowball's chance in hell" of meeting the 2020 target for eradicating child poverty in the UK.  The conversation also included some interesting discussion about how far reducing child poverty and enhancing social mobility were competing claims.  Childhood socio-economic disadvantage has regularly been linked with obesity but does social mobility have any significant health effects in this regard.  A study from the USA looks at family income trajectories and their association with obesity in adolescence. Elsewhere, a survey of current policy and practice considers the role of maternal employment in tackling poverty and promoting social mobility.

Join Professor Steve Field and others in DH's health inequalities and inclusion webinar on Thursday 7 June 11.30am – 12.30pm.

Out in the cold

Quality in Ageing and Older Adults features a group of articles on inequalities amongst older people in Ireland.  These include studies on the relationship between age and social exclusion in rural areas, the effects of recession on older people in Northern Ireland and the Republic and the relationship between cold housing and health and wellbeing.  A survey for Age UK found that "the number of older people owing money has risen sharply over the last year."  The latest figures on fuel poverty from the Department of Energy and Climate change recently reported a fall in numbers of households in fuel poverty for 2010, but predicted a rise for subsequent years.

Left out

Social exclusion has long been considered an issue for people with mental illness. A study in Social Inclusion and Mental Health offers a survey of current evidence, based on the findings of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Scoping Group on Social Exclusion and Mental Health. Another piece of research in the same journal looks at ways to address the impact of social exclusion on mental health in Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) communities.

Home alone

There are plenty of projects that target social isolation amongst older people, but how can you tell what works? A team from the Peninsular College of Medicine and Dentistry has reviewed such interventions, finding there was "evidence of substantial heterogeneity" amongst studies and that comparatively few were well-conducted. Most effective interventions tended to offer social activity and/or some group support; those that engaged older people's active participation also tended to be more successful. A three year action research programme assessing neighbourhood approaches to loneliness from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation may be worth watching. A study considering the relationship between neighbourhood environment and positive mental health amongst older people in Hertfordshire showed that a sense of cohesion with neighbours was associated with better mental wellbeing and less reporting of neighbourhood problems, independently of socio economic and health status. Finally, a team from Birmingham University looks at older people's strategies for dealing with winter cold.

Simple but effective

Finding ways to engage with people who are hard to reach was the aim of the Adults facing Chronic Exclusion (ACE) pilots. The ACE programme was a joint undertaking between healthcare, housing, employment and other agencies. It looked at interventions for people whose lives were "chaotic or isolated" and for whom local services were inaccessible or unaccessed, often because of homelessness prostitution or durg and alcohol misuse. The twelve pilot programmes have now ended and the report on their achievements has been published by the Department for Communities and Local Government: the emphasis is on local solutions, most of which were comparatively inexpensive. The most noticeable healthcare impact was a reduction in use of emergency services, with a shift instead towards primary care. However, the clearest message from the final report is that a key part of any success is "the consistent, trusted adult" who helps clients in accessing existing services in an appropriate way.

Back to work?

Employment and employability are usually seen as key factors in reducing child poverty. Latests results from the Local Authority Child Poverty Innovation Pilots confirm this. Assessing what's been achieved thus far in the ten pilot programmes, it's clear that employment related support, from basic skills training to in-work support, has been in high demand. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's latest poverty and social exclusion monitoring report confirms the significance of worklessness, as it reviews the impact of recession on the UK. In-work poverty and underemployment are two issues highlighted by the report's authors, as numbers of children in poverty belonging to working families has started to rise.