The shift in the notion of prevention from the risk of being significantly harmed, to the risk of being socially excluded saw the rise of several new policy discourses. Prior to this prevention was more commonly used in the context of preventing harm within the fora of child protection. As Little et al (2003) identified, this more commonly referred to the avoidance of a child maltreatment. The launch of Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003) and the subsequent, Every Child Matters: Change for Children (DfES, 2004) saw a significant shift in the conceptualisation of ‘at risk’. This new articulation of ‘at risk’ was more likely to focus upon children and young people experiencing poor outcomes through poor educational attainment, lower social participation, demonstrating poor health or anti-social behaviours (Morris et al, 2009). This suggests that the social construction of the term ‘at risk’ determines children as vulnerable or at risk whose circumstances are not in keeping with the dominant middle class in either culture, values, family, structures, language or appearance (Howard et al, 1999). Risk factors, however, continuously remain difficult to identify with little consensus about what measurements to use, and a continued lack of evidence about causal links between identified risk factors and the future outcomes of the child (Hansen and Plewis, 2004). The core focus of children within preventative type services prior to the Every Child Matters agenda tended to be, for example, those who were in the care system or considered disabled. The Every Child Matters agenda fundamentally changed the discourse of prevention to one that was concerned with the needs of all children, introducing a new conceptual framework for risk. For those working with children and young people this presented ‘a series of tensions between historical responsibilities for children who may suffer significant harm, and new experiences for holistic responses to children and young people’ (Morris et al, 2009: 33).
The construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting within the prevention discourse is equally as important. With the introduction of initiatives such as Sure Start, which partly focused on parenting and thereby positively influencing children’s trajectories from a young age, and the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, highlighting the preference for shared and pooled knowledge about good parenting, there was a clear aim of establishing and enforcing a political version of good parenting norms and values. Gillies (2005) suggested that this removed the discussions of parenting away from societal cause, such as poverty or social injustice, and instead focused upon individual engagement. Gillies (2005) argues that this is a change in preventative discourse, seeing those ‘at risk’ as both perpetrators and victims of their own exclusion, further arguing that in the context of parenting and families the path to social inclusion reflects middle-class values and culture. As a result, those parents not demonstrating politically approved parenting approaches require ‘parenting support’ and new legal and punitive powers that aimed to ‘punish’ parents who failed to deliver to these standards. Walters and Woodward (2007) suggests that this shift in discourse has seen the ‘needs’ of parents of vulnerable children moved aside while their ‘responsibilities’ become the dominant feature. Morris et al’s (2008) literature review of ‘whole family approaches’ which sought to help overcome or prevent social exclusion revealed an almost one-dimensional focus on parenting activities, mainly focused on the mother and her role in securing positive outcomes for her children. When translated at a policy level this focus reflects the political concern of social exclusion transferring through generations, with children replicating behaviours of their socially excluded parents.
As the Labour term evolved, the notion of targeting families and particularly those families considered to be most at risk of social exclusion increased (Morris and Barnes, 2008). The idea of the ‘normal’ family dominated the social policy discourse (France et al, 2010). The imagery of the hard working, socially participative and economically active family arguably reinforced and maintained marginalisation of those ‘other’ families who failed to conform (Morris et al, 2009). Though Labour heavily focused on these families, as Levitas (2005) noted, there was little data gathered from these families to support such assumptions. With families highlighted as a key concern in Every Child Matters and subsequent initiatives, there was a shift in focus to those families perceived as being the ‘most disruptive’. This focus provided the backdrop for publications such as the ‘Think Family’ series from the SEU (Morris et al, 2008) and marked a shift in discourse from the more holistic approach outlined in Every Child Matters, to a vastly interventionist approach which required ‘forceful sanctions’ to ensure compliance and a return to social acceptability (Morris et al, 2009). Underpinned by the ‘Respect’ agenda highlighting the need for intensive family intervention programmes, there was a focus on tackling poor parenting and the provision of positive activities for vulnerable children and young people. Therefore, the trajectory of prevention discourse appeared to be moving away from holistic service provision for the wellbeing of children and towards providing ‘treatment’ for the socially unacceptable.
Within this discourse of prevention, under Labour there was a move away from the concept of social exclusion and addressing the consequences of the wider societal problem, towards that of addressing individual problematic families. This gave room for the Social Exclusion Task Force to drive forward the Family Pathfinder pilots (Cabinet Office, 2008), targeting these families through multi-agency responses, and thus a greater distinction between mainstream or universal services, and targeted services emerged. Some critics have argued that this shift in discourse poses a greater threat to these ‘hard to reach families’. The lack of focus on the structural and cultural context surrounding these families has, some argue, led to ‘defeated’ families (Krumer-Nevo, 2003). Defeated families are those who have been marginalised by society due to economic, social and cultural forces and then let down by the services which have tried to serve them through intensive interventions which have only had partial impact, resulting in these families continuing to experience social and economic deprivation. In short, between 1997 and 2010, the policy discourse around prevention experienced a specific shift from the concepts of social exclusion and the need to promote social inclusion, to those of social investment and economic decision making, where decisions focused on the greatest investment would have the greatest impact. Though it is clear that the concept of social investment was entrenched in the preventative discourse of the ‘third way’ (Giddens, 1998) its significance and status only increased over Labour’s time in power.
This concept of social investment was further developed by the Conservatives, based on the foundational ideas of Labour’s ‘third way’, which advocated active citizenship and community participation within the concept of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. The Big Society ideology was based upon the notion of communities and families taking responsibility for themselves, for the overall benefit of society. In his examination of the social investment model, Gray (2013) observes that while social inclusion, rather than exclusion, still exists as a concept within preventative services it has shifted away from the previous rhetoric of social and community participation to one of economic participation through the act of work, or seeking to work. Jenson (2010)