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Life skills key to tackling social exclusion and homelessness
Ivan Lewis MP, responsible for adult skills in the Department for Education and Skills, will launch the report on Tuesday 12 October 2004. Government is starting to recognise that it needs to address soft skills needed to survive in mainstream society as well as the hard skills that employers demand.
“This report confirms our belief that solving the problem of homelessness is about more than providing a roof, homeless people need an opportunity to rebuild their confidence and their lives,” says Shaks Ghosh, chief executive of Crisis.
The new Crisis/Demos report argues that we need a new approach to developing life skills as a way to tackle social exclusion. Attempts to help people develop life skills should start from the actual experiences of their lives, rather than attempting to teach life skills in a formal setting.
The authors highlight the formal approach to life skills development used in Connexions, the ‘one-stop shop’ for young people’s services, and the government’s Skills for Life strategy. In both cases, the response to poor life skills has been to offer formal training.
“There is a clear link between poor life skills and social exclusion, but up until now policy initiatives have tended to try to ‘close the gap’ by trying to teach people the skills they are missing,” says Hannah Lownsbrough, co-author of Survival Skills.
“Attempts to help people develop life skills need to start from the skills and experience they already have, not the things they lack. Successful life skills projects have used people’s own experience as the starting point to increase their self-confidence and to develop new life skills.”
In many cases life skills learned during a period of homelessness can be adapted to mainstream society. By starting from the perspective of actual experience of social exclusion, people are more likely to build on their strengths rather than be made more aware of their weaknesses.
Survival Skills is the report of a research project that looked at four life skills projects, including the Skylight drop-in centre run by Crisis. The authors make recommendations for policy makers and service providers on new ways to apply life skills.
Notes to editors
- Survival Skills: Using life skills to tackle social exclusion is published by Crisis and Demos on Tuesday 12 October 2004. Copies are available for free download at http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/survivalskills or www.crisis.org.uk Hard copies can be ordered from Central Books on 020 8986 5488 or online at www.centralbooks.co.uk
- The launch with Ivan Lewis MP, parliamentary under secretary for skills and vocational education, is on Tuesday 12 October 2004 at 9.45am at Skylight, Commercial Street, London E1.
- Crisis is the national charity for solitary homeless people and works year-round across the UK helping people fulfil their potential and transform their lives. Crisis helps rebuild the lives of homeless people by helping those trapped in the cycle of homelessness and raising awareness of their plight. The charity estimates that there are around 380,000 hidden homeless people in Britain, living in hostels, temporary bed and breakfast accommodation, squats or sleeping on the floors of friends and family.
- Demos is an independent think tank with a long-standing interest in tackling social exclusion. Recent reports include Home Alone: Combating isolation with older housebound people (with WRVS) and Disablism: How to tackle the last prejudice (with Scope).
- Hannah Lownsbrough, Gillian Thomas and Sarah Gillinson are researchers at Demos.