Beveridge 4.0(Participle, 2008)

http://www.participle.net/our-vision

Participle - Our Vision

 

Beveridge 4.0 

 

September 2008 
Version 1 

 

Participle Limited, 2 Swan Court, 9 Tanner Street, London SE1 3LE Tel 020 7089 6950,
Skype we.are.participle, hello@participle.net, www.participle.net

Contact: Hilary Cottam hilaryc@participle.net 

 

 

Introduction 

Towards the end of his life, Sir William Beveridge decided there were major errors in his  work: he had made a mistake in the way he had designed our welfare state. 

Beveridge was a 20th century giant. The vision and strategy he set out in his first 1942  report were supported by political thinkers on the left and right, and by the general  public who wanted a new and fairer Britain. Before Beveridge, Britain can be seen as a  place of gross inequality, with health care that few could afford or find, schools which  looked like those portrayed in a Dickens’ novel, and a society desperately hanging on to  its colonial legacy. The post-war welfare state swept all this away in one of the most  dramatic social transformations Britain has ever seen. 

Today in 2008, we need a new vision and strategy – one that is capable of bringing  about a similarly far reaching transformation for our new century. We argue that the  mistake Beveridge thought he had made is fundamental to this transformation. Based  on this we set out here a new vision – one which has developed from the practical work  that Participle has undertaken. It is a work in progress and we would like your views  and thoughts. First however, let’s start with Beveridge’s own original idea. 

The Original Idea 

The 1942 reporti was guided by three principles; a determination to be radical; an attack  on the five giants of ‘want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness’; and a  commitment to co-operation between the state and the individual. Public services, such  as education and health, would be universally available, for the most part free and  funded by general taxation. 

Other services, such as social care, would be rationed according to need. Access to  these services would be determined by strict eligibility criteria and assessments by  professionals. Financial benefits such as pensions would be paid according to  contributions made by individuals through the National Insurance scheme.  Responsibility for providing services was carefully shared between central and local  government. 

The result was a set of arrangements, The Welfare Settlement, which has been  remarkably successful at transforming our society. In the decades after the Second  World War, Britain experienced significant improvements in levels of education, health  outcomes, life expectancy, social mobility, employment opportunities, and prosperity.  Internationally, institutions such as the National Health Service have been widely  admired, and aspects of the 1942 model have long been exported.

So, what exactly were the errors that Sir William detected in his work? Was he  right? And can we see the results of these flaws today in the welfare state we  have inherited? 

Driving himself hard in order to finish his revisions, Beveridge published a third report – we will call it Beveridge 3.0 – in 1948ii. In this report, Beveridge voiced his concerns  that he had both missed and limited the potential power of the citizen.  

Whilst Beveridge still believed that the state must do more things than it had attempted  in the past, he felt that ‘room, opportunity and encouragement for voluntary action in  seeking new ways of social advance…services of a kind which often money cannot buy’  were equally critical. He feared that his original reforms were encouraging individuals  to focus passively on their needs. So much so, that he personally, never used the term  Welfare State, preferring the phrase ‘Social Services State’, which he used to highlight  the individual’s duties.  

Beveridge’s ultimate concern in his original 1942 report had not been the services  themselves but how to build a more socially cohesive, fairer nation. He no longer  thought the Welfare State could deliver this.

 

 

1. Sounds familiar? 

Let’s take a look at the present day Welfare State, to see in what ways Beveridge’s  concerns have materialised, and at new problems even he did not predict. 

(1) Reproducing inequality

despite improvements in overall outcomes, such as life  expectancy, existing services reproduce social inequalities, many of which are  significant by international standards, and in some cases are widening and entrenched.  For instance, education and literacy levels were raised, only to have stalled in recent  years, leaving many young Britons poorly qualified compared to their European peers  and without the skills to compete in the global job market.  

At the same time, the basic requisites for a good and secure life are growing and  changing. The social and economic restructuring of the past two decades has left  behind a heavy burden of exclusion and inequality. The economy is even more skills based, which is tough for those who lack them. In the words of the sociologist Esping Anderson, who has completed a comparative European study of welfare issues, the  ‘ante’ required to participate in society and the economy is constantly rising, and the  current structure of the welfare state is ill equipped to protect and support families.iii 

(2) Creating dependency

For those who find themselves outside the mainstream, the  way existing services work is often disempowering and prone to locking families into a  vicious cycle of need. In order to qualify for services, needs often have to be  accentuated, and there is rarely any incentive to live in a different way. Take housing:  there is every reason to exaggerate need in order to move up the waiting list, and then  no positive incentive or support to create a different life and move on. The result is  generations who transfer their dependence on the state from parents to children, locked  into places and lifestyles, from which they cannot escape. A new system is needed  which ensures mobility. 

(3) Rising costs 

Existing services are poor at preventing social problems, and better  equipped for reacting to emergencies, which is very expensive. In the UK, there is  reluctance on all sides of the political divide to raise taxes, whilst the pressure of the  electoral cycle creates incentives for short term wins as opposed to sorely needed long  term investment in preventative approaches. The National Insurance model can no  longer provide for all of our needs, particularly when expensive advances in health care  options are available. At the same time, attempts to extract greater efficiencies and cut  costs have hit a ceiling, whilst often alienating front line workers, creating new,  unforeseen problems.

(4) New problems 

The challenges themselves have changed; chronic disease,  depression, ageing, the scale of inequality and the environmental challenge are largely  issues that were not foreseen in 1942. These issues cut across the silos of the 1942  institutions, which makes them hard to tackle. More importantly, they are different in  nature and demand a wholly different approach: changing the way one lives to manage  a condition such as diabetes for example, means engaging with emotions and personal  motivation, as well as tackling underlying socio economic circumstances which are the  root cause of many challenges.  

Whilst diabetes and other chronic diseases, such as obesity, now affect a quarter of the  British population and are recognised as significant issues, other ‘newer’ problems can  still seem marginal. We are only just beginning to understand the scale of the  opportunity and challenge presented by an ageing society. Similarly with the  environmental challenge, we are not yet able to grasp the extent to which this will need  to challenge old ways of doing business and still talk in the same breath of the need for  traditional economic growth. 

(5) Social change 

The nature of the family has changed with people living longer, less  than half of children growing up in two parent households and most women working  and therefore unable to easily assume the domestic care roles that silently supported  the state institutions in 1942. High levels of migration mean not only that family  generations live apart but that Britain is ethnically diverse. The cohesive, white British  population who lived only an average seven years beyond retirement was probably  imaginary in 1942 and is certainly non existent today.  

(6) Intellectual change 

We have new ways of looking at the world, from neuro science  to psychoanalysis, that change the way we would construct a response and in particular  how we understand the social and emotional causes of many of the issues the welfare  state seeks to address. Developments in science and technology in particular radically  change the way we can organise these responses and communicate with each other.  

Of course, many of the failings of the Welfare State are not themselves new. A lot of  effort has gone into the reform of the post-war model over the last twenty years. In the  light of Beveridge 3.0, however, we can see that this effort has largely been misplaced.  The emphasis has been on reform of the post-war institutions. The logical development  of which has led to an emphasis on training more health staff and building more  hospitals, rather than increasing support for people themselves to combat lifestyle  diseases. Similarly, a policy to construct ‘Titan’-sized prisons makes sense only when  the short-term costs of incarceration are considered. The social – and therefore  financial – costs of re-offending are predicted to escalate. 

When new services are conceived they are all too often props for the failure of existing  institutions; a youth service, for instance, that tries to do something for the thousands of  young people who are failed annually by the education system. The welfare state is like  a person with a limp – it is the back that is broken, but we see the limp and provide  crutches.

Beveridge’s final report, was in many ways a good predictor of many of the dangers  inherent within his original vision. Added to this are other, perhaps more complex  social problems that he did not anticipate and, perhaps, could not have foreseen. Inter woven throughout have been economic developments, the rise of the market,  consumption, and the cultural and intellectual dominance of these ways of thinking. 

As a result, in 2008 we, the citizens, are offered two ways to see ourselves. The market  tells us that we are individual consumers, defined by our desires/wants, whereas the  welfare state tells us that we must define ourselves by our needs. This is still reflected  within the dominant narratives of the left and right. Tellingly, the theme tune of  Compassionate Conservatism is ‘You can get it if you really want’iv whilst, over a  decade ago, New Labour’s passive anthem was ‘Things can only get better’. 

At Participle, we have found over and over again, even in the most ‘difficult’ of places, that people do not want to see themselves in either category. We do not want to be  needy, with ‘things’ being done to us, we want to contribute and participate. Nor do we  want to be atomised consumers, being told that it’s our responsibility to ‘get it’. We find  that people want to be socially connected and to collectively make things happen.iv

 

 

2. Participle: working towards  our own Beveridge 4.0  

Beveridge 4.0 is not about re-defining the giants (illness, ignorance, disease, squalor,  and want), it’s about a new lens to look at the issues, not simply focusing on people’s  needs. It’s about having a new structure which can continually flex to address problems  as they come along. And, it’s about harnessing the power of the social, not a focus on a  linear relationship between the individual and the state.  

At Participle, taking our cue from William Beveridge, we turn current approaches on  their heads, by starting not with the institutions or problems as conceived by those  within them, but with people themselves and the lives they want to lead, their  motivations and aspirations. If we were to distil our approach down to two principles,  we would say firstly it is about motivating deep participation, and secondly about  encouraging social connections and contributions. 

Thinking then from this perspective, a Beveridge 4.0 does not look solely at the  individual. The vision starts at the level of the household, with the individual in it, but  also takes into consideration their network of relationships, family and friends. A  Beveridge 4.0 does not negate needs, but does not define people by these needs.  Rather than starting from this vantage point, Beveridge 4.0 starts from the lives people  want to lead, the things people want to contribute, do and share.  

So what would our ‘Beveridge 4.0’ look like? 

Participation and contribution depend on a bigger narrative, one that all of us can relate  to; a story about dreams and aspirations, not problems and needs; a story that starts  with our own lives but encompasses others – our friends, family and wider community;  a story about how we can then realistically achieve our dreams. 

Currently, the mainstream political parties promise us wellbeing, or perhaps happiness.  Whilst both these concepts are important in that they seek to supplement traditional  economic measures of success with physical and psychological factors, they are also  limited in their power. Wellbeing seems too flimsy, and cannot really encapsulate  collective contribution, since it is focussed on the individual. Happiness seems too  unreliable and almost infantilising – none of us can expect to be happy all the time, and  we certainly do not want our happiness to be regulated by the state. More fundamentally, neither of these concepts helps us to look at deeper root causes and  connections. 

The vision of a Beveridge 4.0 might knit together elements of an epic novel with an  approach that includes the capabilities of the individuals within it. The story line of the  European novel, the African fable, or the big screen epic is familiar to everyone: protagonists both find and develop themselves by struggling against their fate. These  stories are compelling because they bring into play the economic, spiritual and  emotional dimensions of life and give voice to higher hopes, the energy for self development and the reform of society and culture. 

Of course, such a vision is meaningless without the ability of each citizen to participate  in it. The freedom to lead a better life will be reflected in a person’s capabilities. If there  is to be an equal chance for everyone to realise their potential, the starting point has to  

be more than just ‘opportunities’, it must be a deep commitment to fostering the broader  skill sets that enable us to seize and shape opportunities. Underpinning our vision is a  belief that everyone needs a role or purpose in life, a place to be and meaningful  relationships with others – as we show below, these will be the capabilities that drive a  new Beveridge 4.0.

 

 

3. Five Core Principles 

Through our practice, Participle has identified five core principles for a 21ST century  welfare state. We have summarised them below. Each takes as a starting point a major  principle in Beveridge’s original report and re-evaluates it for the specific demands of  our time. In this way, we at Participle see and recommend a major shift from an  outmoded and empirically disproven practice to a new and researched practice, created  in collaboration with the wider public. 

A shift from: 
- Needs to Capabilities 
- Targeted to Open to All 
- Financial Focus to a Resource Focus 
- Centralised Institutions to Distributed Networks 
- Individual to Social Networks 

(1) A Capabilities Model 

The welfare state we have inherited is a needs-based model. With the exception of  most health care and education services, individuals need to prove that they are eligible  to receive a service or state support, a process of self-definition that can become self belief; a process that is negatively self-perpetuating.  

Working with the older population in Southwark, London we have seen, for example,  how ailments and infirmities must be exaggerated in order to receive a service. Once a  service is accessed, individuals often perpetuate this syndrome, for instance taking less  exercise than they should, to ensure that they are not seen as fit and able. Such  behaviour is both logical and wide-spread in a climate of scarcity and rigorously  assessed eligibility criteria. Similarly attempts to cut benefits are more likely to  encourage citizens to ensure that they become eligible for more expensive benefits: the  perverse logic of need making it ever harder for them to break out of this cycle.  

Our practice has shown us the power of inverting this model, by thinking about the  assets of individuals and communities, and how these might be developed and  supported as positive capabilities. It was striking in Southwark that the very individuals  who explained how needy they had to be to access various services, simultaneously  lamented that they had so much to offer in other areas of their lives, they wanted to  contribute and participate, but ‘the system’ worked against this.

A capabilities or assets-based model would no longer be based on an individual  claiming ‘I need x or y benefit or service, but rather, ‘I want to live in this way and I  would like to be able to…’ 

The original capabilities model as developed by Martha Nussbaum includes ten  capabilities.v To keep it simple, we focus on three assets or capabilities: relationships;  work and learning; and the environment. These map directly onto our core vision of  meaningful relationships, a role in life and an enriching place to be.  

• Relationships 

Britain today is fighting a social recessionvi. The capability to build  and sustain relationships has been complicated by social upheaval: changing family  structures, geographic dislocation, and the pressures on time brought about by a  constant re-definition of work and the extension of private competition into areas of  intimate, personal life. The results are costly in terms of depression, mental illness  and social dislocation. 

Take youth as an example. International research shows that young people thrive  when they are supported by a network of supportive relationships. As Camila  Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company, says of her work with some of London’s  most troubled young people; ‘love is the organising principle’. The language and  approach this implies is in direct contrast to a traditional policy approach, which  emphasises institutions (such as youth centres and longer school hours) and  activities, over and above a focus on motivation and social networks.  

The lens of relationships offers a powerful critique to the traditional policy-based,  service mentality. Participle is running a youth project, called Reach Out, that will  look at ways to foster authentic, resilient relationships across generations and  between peers, addressing not the symptoms (bad behaviour) but the causes  (relationships and motivation). This work will sit alongside a number of other new  approaches to these issues, such as the work that the Young Foundation and  Manchester City Council are doing to foster emotional resilience in schools. 

• Work and Learning 

The capability for forming relationships is closely connected to  work and learning. Time to care and to nurture relationships is too often at odds  with the demands of the labour market. Conversely we also see how an emphasis  on the acquisition of basic skills at the exclusion of a focus on softer relationship  skills, so called social capital, locks many into low paid, low skilled work.  

Only parts of the work and learning agenda are directly relevant to Participle’s  project work, but keeping these interconnections in mind is core to our holistic  approach. We are interested in the 100,000 young people who currently drop out of  school as NEET (not in employment, education or training); their concerns are  addressed in our youth work. We are also interested in the importance of extending  notions of work to include other social activities and volunteering. Our ageing work  builds on both the skills of older people and their desire to keep on learning with  links to ideas such as the University of the Third Age and the School for Everything,  both of which are inventing compelling, bottom-up ways of working in this area.

• Environment 

In 1942, environmental concerns were many years from visibility.  Today politicians routinely cite the environmental challenge as the greatest threat to  civilisation and in so doing inadvertently highlight the limitations of both existing  institutions and state/citizen relationships to tackle these issues. 

The environmental challenge is at once planetary and hyper-local in scale.  Planetary because the life we want to live has clearly got to work from the point of  view of a global society and a global viewpoint of sustainability. Hyper-local,  because macro conversations are ultimately meaningless unless we can shape  local places where people want to live and thrive. Our capability to form  communities and relationships at this scale is critical. 

Growing our environmental capabilities will involve developing purposeful, green  collar jobs, designing beautiful places, and a radical re-consideration of what should  be public and shared - from heating systems to washing machines – and how these  goods will be distributed, just as medicines were considered in the 1940s  settlement. 

Before leaving the capabilities model, perhaps a final note is needed to address the  issue of those that are ‘incapable’. Two points seem important here. Firstly, Participle’s  work usually starts with those that others – perhaps the state, the media, or wider  society - consider to be incapable (for example the housebound elderly, ‘chaotic’  families or ‘problem’ youth). Again and again we have found that by not defining  individuals or our work by a notion of need, we are able to unlock aspirations and  capabilities. Secondly, and particularly relevant to the elderly but also for example to  those with learning disabilities, our concept is one of a journey: even those in the most  challenging circumstances can build from a to b and, there are times in everyone’s lives  whether through age or illness or other unforeseen circumstance, one is drawing on the  capital both economic and social that has been built at other times – this is why  relationships in particular are key. 

(2) Universal Preventative Services: Open to All 

The nature of the challenges we face, from climate change to chronic disease, calls for  universal, preventative services – solutions which are open to all, and open to mass  contribution as well as mass use. 

Take Ageing. Currently care services are targeted through increasingly stringent  eligibility criteria. This process of limiting service access is itself expensive (up to 80  percent of staff time in any public service is used in assessment) and leads to the  inefficient use of the available resources. We have seen, for example, how the elderly  hang on to and hoard services that they may no longer really need. Targeted welfare  has not contributed to equality in Britain.vii 

There is a more fundamental problem, which our ageing work also illustrates. A rich  third age (one which is at once more fulfilling and less costly in terms of support required) depends on being physically active, socially engaged and maintaining a range  of interests. Southwark Circle is the membership organisation we have designed with  Southwark’s residents to support these activities. Combining the roles of a concierge  service, self-help co-operative and social network it promises to take care of worries and support its members to flourish. The more heavily and widely this service is used,  the richer the lives of Southwark residents will be, and the fewer expensive curative type services they will need. We have spent nine months in Southwark working with older residents to understand exactly what would motivate them to join, use and  contribute to this universal service. 

If services are to be truly universal – encouraging all Britons to take exercise, for  example – they need to be aspirational, and designed to ensure that everyone is  motivated to join. This in turn leads to a very different way of thinking about resources  and the economics of service provision. 

(3) Resource Focus 

The current system links an individual’s entitlement to benefits to a contributory system  that focuses only on National Insurance contributions. This narrow financial focus then  extends into and limits the consideration of how services will be paid for. 

Our work does two things. It focuses on root causes, and often shows that resources  are in the wrong place. Our prison work is an example. It costs £37,000 per year to  keep a prisoner incarcerated, 94 percent of which is allocated to security. Thinking  about different ways of designing the building and its security systems can release  some of this funding to dedicate to holistic programmes, which have been proven  internationally to combat re-offending, but were previously seen as too expensive to  fund in the UK. 

Secondly, our work focuses on expanding the definition of, and access to, the resources  available. Ageing is perceived as a problem, because the numbers of elderly people  are growing and their predicted care needs are larger than the state resources currently  provided. However some 80 percent of the wealth in Britain is held by this same  population group – and this is wealth calculated only in equity, ignoring the skills and  time latent within it. Working with those who control these resources, the elderly  themselves, we have developed a different way of thinking about resources and how to  combine them. Southwark Circle mixes voluntary, state and private resources to  provide a greatly enriched offer to its members than that narrowly designed as ‘social  care’. Our work in encouraging active lifestyles among residents on a deprived housing  estate in Kent was similar: the Activ Mobs combine professional and community time  and talents in new ways to support sustained exercise. 

Participle’s work in this area contributes to a number of similar innovations taking place  within Britain and internationally. These include: In Control’s work on individual  budgets, which have successfully enabled those with learning difficulties to unlock their  capabilities; participative budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil and in a more limited way in Ealing Local Authority London; and experiments with voluntary tax contributions in  Bogota, Colombia.  

(4) Distributed Institutional Networks 

Our existing welfare state and public services operate on highly centralised principles.  The current debate about devolving more power to local institutions, whilst welcomed,  does not get to the heart of the matter since it still perceives a world in which things are  largely done to and for people and communities. The only difference is that now local,  rather than national government will be ‘doing’ it. 

More bottom-up, participative approaches are both dependent on and sustained by a  more distributed model. We can take the problem of diabetes as an example,  something we have previously worked on and written about. Diabetes affects more  than 2 million people in Britain and absorbs 10 percent of hospital costs. Yet effective  management of the condition does not need hospital based care, but rather support in  the home, the pub, the workplace – advice and networks that are close at hand,  provided by peers and experts where needed.  

Ivan Illich described how ‘ good institutions encourage self-assembly, re-use and repair.  They do not just serve people but create capabilities in them, and support initiative,  rather than supplanting it’.viii Circle www.circlecentral.com is at once hyper-local and  national/international (combining street level support with specialised or collective  macro support) and works on just such a philosophy. The more it is used, the more  sustainable it becomes as expertise and resources are distributed amongst the  members. 

Such distributed solutions radically change the nature of the relationship between the  individual and the state. At the local level, interaction is more ‘human’ and personal,  collaboration is more feasible and a genuine conversation around issues of priorities  and contributions becomes possible, further reinforcing relationships.  

Finally, it is important to note that these distributed institutions will be infrastructure light, in contrast to their 1950s predecessors. The last ten years of ‘modernisation’  have seen a continued focus on infrastructure – huge public construction programmes  and the adding on (as opposed to integration) of technology. Examples include NHS  Direct and Curriculum Online.  

Many of these technology driven innovations have been successful on their own terms,  but the net effect has been to add another level of centralised service delivery, as is the  case with NHS Direct. In no case has the innovation replaced demand for the core  service. In many other cases, criminal justice, for example, technology has been used  to extend the life of an outdated service: such as a Fordist model of incarceration for  prisoners as opposed to a technologically driven programme of rehabilitation.

Beveridge 4.0 challenges ‘big infrastructure’ mindsets. A user-led revolution will ensure  that human needs are met first. Technology is critical, not least because it makes  possible the new commonalities and collaboration. At the same time it needs to be  recognised merely as the means not the end, akin to a train platform where people will  stand in order to go somewhere, not the destination. 

(5) Social Networks 

Our lives are greatly determined by social networks: those of us who have strong bonds  with families and friends tend to live longer and happier lives. Making changes in our  lives is also easier if we are supported by friends. Research shows conclusively that  our behaviour is influenced most strongly by our peer groups.ix Our project work, such  as Activ Mobs in Kent, builds on these insights by harnessing the potential of the bonds  of friendship to make deep and lasting changes in people’s lifestyles. 

We perceive that in the modern world it is often harder to hold onto these networks.  Opportunities for education and work frequently take us far from our families, and can  involve national and international migration. Living longer means that many of us will  outlive our partners and closest friends. One of the issues that Beveridge was most  keen to tackle was the problem of loneliness amongst the elderly. Yet, in Britain today  half of all old people describe themselves as lonely. Little progress has been made on  this front, indeed the issue may be more acute, exacerbated by the culture of the very  services designed to address the problem. 

Some of the most striking insights from our deep participative work with older people,  their families and social networks, are how difficult it is for adult children to ensure that  their ageing parents and neighbours have the provision they need. Most adult children  live at a distance from their ageing parents, which makes caring for them even harder.  Strikingly, even so called ‘self funders’, those that do not need help from the state but  are looking to buy help in the private care market face the same issues.  

People want to support each other but the systems and services on offer make this  hard, if not impossible. The old people’s home is a graphic illustration. An option  chosen by most families at the end of the line, when caring for a relative has become  too difficult, it as if a loved one is imprisoned there. Where before families felt broken by  the level of care they needed to find, without support, now they are seen as interfering if  they try to contribute in some way.  

This is a deep challenge of social reform. Public services need both to be based  around social networks – taking into account families and friends, rather than focusing  on the individual – and designed to foster these relationships. [Link to With] 

In Southwark, we have clearly seen that those with the strongest social connections to  friends, neighbours and family not only consider themselves to be living happier and  fuller lives, they are also able to meet most if not all of their needs before they become  insurmountable. If, however, social networks are not strong, apparently small difficulties build up, the state then needs to move in with a comprehensive and  expensive response.  

Southwark Circle, the service we have designed with older people in Southwark, inverts  the traditional hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy helps people with their basic material  needs, leaving their social life and social connections as a ‘nice to have’, but not as an  essential part of the picture. We have seen that using limited resources to enable a  social life has the effect of expanding the resources available: the time and talent of  friends, neighbours and family can more than meet the material needs. 

Services deal with people as individuals, sometimes to the obvious detriment of their  claimed goals so, for example, when we worked with drug users in Norfolk we found  that attention focused only on the mother and her need to come off drugs to remain with  her child, blind to the impact of her partner and wider social circle.

 

 

4. Making it happen 

It is now apparent that Beveridge was right when, in his third report, he expressed his  fear that he had both missed and limited the potential power of the citizen. Upward  pressures on the current welfare state from an ageing population are putting an  unbearable stress on the post-war institutions and services. They are a symptom both  of the wider problem and the presumed solution. When viewed within the current  framework of needs on the one hand and the fiscal constraints of limited National  Insurance contributions on the other, ageing is seen as an insurmountable crisis. What  Beveridge had already realised and Participle’s work demonstrates is the way in which  citizens can collectively design new responses. The flourishing of invention and  creative activity so notable in other areas of our society and economy, are almost totally  lacking in the welfare regime: squeezed out by the rigid focus of an outdated system  based on the individual and their ‘needs’. 

We don’t have all the answers at Participle, but we are eager to discuss our thinking,  drawing on our practice. We have set out the principles behind the way we work, to  test the ideas and have a wider conversation.  

Beveridge 4.0 draws on our work to date and provides a framework for future work, and  the partnerships and collaborations we hope to build. By the close of 2008, we will be  adding to our current portfolio of work with two closely connected new projects on the  family and youth. This work attempts to explore the five shifts we propose in practice.  

‘It is in me to do it. I need to get going’, one of the participants in our ageing work  declared, unconsciously echoing Beveridge’s reputed own last words ‘I still have a  thousand things to do’. At Participle, we have taken up the baton.

  

 

 

i  Social insurance and Allied Services (The Beveridge Report) 1942 HMSO 

ii Voluntary Action: a report on methods of social advance (1948) Allen and Unwin, London. Beveridge’s second report, Full Employment in a free society (1944) Allen and Unwin, London  was, as its title suggests a deeper consideration of issues of employment and national  insurance. 

iii Gosta Esping – Andersen; Why We Need a New Welfare State, Oxford University Press 2002;  30 

iv Originally the theme tune to the film The Harder They Come. The irony, that the film’s  protagonists can only ‘get it’ illegally, seems to have escaped the Conservative party. v Nussbaum argues for: life; bodily health; bodily integrity (freedom of movement, reproductive  choices); senses, imagination and thought; emotions (being able to have attachments to things  and people); practical reason (being able to engage in critical reflection); affiliation; other  species (living with concern for nature and the planet); play; control over one’s Environment  (both political and material). 

vi The phrase social recession was first used by the American psychologist David Myers, who  attributed its cause to extreme ‘radical individualism’ 

vii Esping Anderson 2002; 15 

viii Deschooling society 1972, quoted in Charles Leadbeater, We Think. Profile Books 2008; 150 ix Columbia University http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/05/25/AR2008052501779.html?hpid=topnews