Tuesday’s Autumn statement reconfirmed what many have long suspected: there is no imminent prospect of a boom in public spending to match that of the New Labour years. Yet, as spending on public services dwindles, the needs of those who rely on them do not, as the organisations Oxfam works with to tackle poverty in the UK know all too well. The increasingly urgent question, then, is how to provide effective public services more cheaply.

At a report launch last week, Community Links was joined by a range of experts to explore one powerful possibility: that acting earlier to forestall problems rather than cope with their consequences is not only better for those involved, but also cheaper for those paying. Society can no longer afford to wait for trouble – footing the bill, for instance, for the unemployed school leaver who can’t read and write. Instead we could act earlier, by investing in reading recovery programmes several years before. The report is called the Triple Dividend, because an Early Action society benefits three times over – from increased social well-being, lower spending on expensive acute interventions, and higher growth with a better-off workforce: thriving lives, costing less, contributing more.

It’s not a new thought; the report catalogues numerous government reports and other official documents that have reached the same conclusion. Take this, for instance, from a 2009 Audit Commission report:

A young person who starts showing behavioural problems at five, and is dealt with through the criminal justice system will cost the taxpayer around £207,000 by the age of 16. Alternative interventions to support changes in behaviour would cost about £47,000. Over £113 million a year would be saved if just one in ten young offenders was diverted towards effective support.

Or this from the Department of Education’s explanation of the Early Intervention Grant (EIG): “It is common sense that intervening early to stop problems developing has to be the best way of preventing bigger and more expensive problems.”

The question is why common sense so rarely becomes common practice. The report identifies technical barriers – for example in the way the Treasury classifies spending – which have frequently frustrated efforts to implement projects which might cost more upfront but would yield much greater savings in the long run. Initiatives like Social Impact Bonds, which transfer some of the upfront costs onto investors rather than government, have a role to play here but the report calls for more radical shifts within government as well.

‘Transition planning’ within central and local government departments would involve a steady shift of resources from acute services to earlier action, committing for example to spending 5 per cent of their budget on prevention and early action, aiming to increase that proportion by 5 per cent each year for the next three years. It suggests the Office of Budget Responsibility could model the effect within their growth forecasts, and that early action spending should be treated differently within Departmental Expenditure Limits.

This might seem far-fetched at a time of economic crisis, but the Scottish Government is setting a powerful example: Their recent Finance Committee report said: “The current reactive approach to public spending is unsustainable. There must be a shift away from reacting to crises to a greater focus on prevention and early intervention.”  They supported a budget that included a £500m increase in preventative spending, and Education Minister Angela Constance says that “apart from independence, preventative spend is the most radical and exciting agenda that this government is pursuing.”

Early Action is not a fully-costed set of proposals but it is a framework under which to think about the kind of society we want – one in which everyone has access to the support to be successful, not left unaided until the point where we’re forced to pick up the pieces.

Will Horwitz is the Communications Officer at Community Links, a charity working with deprived communities in East London, and also one of our partners.

Then we face a dilemma. On the one hand, we know that the media portrayal of places like Newham is usually negative, and untrue. When people on low incomes feature in the news it’s usually either as criminals or ‘benefit scroungers’, and there is a strong tendency for the media to reinforce this. We don’t want to abuse the trust our users place in us by exposing them to public abuse or misrepresentation (it’s happened in the past).

On the other hand, the only way to challenge these stereotypes is to try and make sure that Newham’s real stories are heard. Last year, for example, Community Links relied on over 1000 volunteers, most from the local community, many on very low incomes. Without them we wouldn’t be able to carry on. Cliff, for example, is on Jobseekers’ Allowance, looking for work, but still volunteers most days at his local community centre, gardening, looking after young people, and sitting on the management committee.

As Oxfam’s latest report, Something for Nothing, excellently highlights, people on low incomes – just like everyone else – make huge but often unrecognised contributions to society, through caring, volunteering, and supporting their community. Carers UK estimate that unpaid caring saves the UK £87bn every year.

Much of this is informal and undocumented, so the only way to expose it is through individual stories. The scant evidence that exists suggests that activities like helping a neighbour with the shopping, or giving a bit of useful advice occurs far more in low income communities where individuals often rely on reciprocal relationships and non financial assets in the absence of material support. This conclusion is born out by our experience in Newham, where often thriving communities exist even in areas with very little money, and are often centred around community hubs run by us or similar organisations.

When the new government’s Big Society idea is presented as the antidote to “Broken Britain’s” more deprived communities it ignores the fact that many people on benefits, or struggling in low paid jobs, are nonetheless some of the biggest participants in communities that are thriving in many places. Recognising this, in the way that Oxfam’s report so clearly does, will be vital. Now we need to get better at telling those stories.

Will Horwitz works on communications for East London Charity Community Links. He is also an alumnus of Oxfam’s UK Poverty Programme. (Community Links are spending this week debating how the media portrays poverty).

A couple of years ago a headline in the Mail screamed “Welcome to Britain, land of the rising scum…. We’ve cornered the market on welfare layabouts, drug addicts and feral gangs.” An extreme example, certainly, but still perhaps illustrative of the way people on benefits, unemployed, or on low incomes are portrayed in the media.

Significant research over the last few years has shown how, even in less vitriolic publications – across newspapers, TV, and radio – depictions of people in poverty are unrepresentative, overwhelmingly negative, and often have scant respect for the individuals featured, despite the best intentions of many journalists.

We’ve decided to spend a week debating this on the Community Links blog. We’ve invited contributions from a wide range of people, from award-winning bloggers to young people from Newham. New ones will be going up every day. The first is a fascinating look at how coverage of the Edlington attacks illustrates the media’s focus on the ‘visible poor.’ Sign up for email updates or follow the RSS feed if you’d like to be kept up to date.

A couple of weeks ago I suggested some reasons why media portrayals of poverty are so important, and below are some questions to consider throughout the week. If you’d like to write a post then please get in touch, otherwise please do let us know your thoughts in the comments boxes under each post.

Finally, thinking and writing about these issues is important, but doing something is even more so. I hope we can arrive at some new ideas or new commitments to do something differently by the end of the week. In the meantime, please join the debate.

Some questions to consider

• Does it matter how the media portrays poor people?
• Are ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’ even the right words?
• Should charities engage with the media on this issue?
• Are you already doing work to change the way people are portrayed?
• What else could we do (as charities, individuals, journalists?)
• How does it feel to be portrayed in one of these programmes?
• What’s it like, as a journalist, trying to cover stories about these issues?

I lost my job last year.

I have applied for 60 jobs and had my CV reviewed and rewritten, but I get the ‘unfortunately…’ letter every time. Five jobs have been withdrawn because the position isn’t cost-effective for the company.

I have never been on benefits before, and on this money I just can’t cope. It’s too little.

I get £100 per week. I have 2 kids aged 7 and 8, and £130 child benefit a month.

My gas is £15 per week. Electric £15 per week. Water £10 p/w. Shopping is £50 p/w.
£17.50 running a phone line to stay in contact with family, as the Council gave us a house in a town away from family (they have to call us though).

Then I have school trips and clubs (most of the time they can’t go, as i can’t afford it, so they miss out.)

I had to get the kids to go without a bath for a week because I had no gas! And I gave them my duvet while I slept under the sofa throw.

I get family to get children’s clothes for Christmas and birthdays as i cant afford to buy them. The children need shoes at £10-20 a go, and my shoes are hanging off my feet. My clothes I get from charity shops if I have a spare £5.

And my money has all gone.

I can’t do anything. I can’t even visit my family as I can’t afford the bus fare, and they don’t drive. The kids are suffering.

On top of this, my phone company tried to take money on the wrong day, and now I get bank charges. So for the last two weeks I have only had £50 benefits. I have called and argued with the company and bank, but they said ‘tough’.

I have another charge of £30 coming out next week, so I’ll only get £70.

Oh and my washing machine has just broken, so I have to wash clothes in the bath with cold water. I can’t afford to heat the tank for clothes and baths. To get a new one will be £200 minimum, so the kids’ cloths are going gray and damaged. I can’t go to the launderette at a wash of £4 a go, for 3 loads a week.

Mark Easton wove FRED into some thoughtful comments on the role of charities in campaigning, after talking about it on the Today programme (07:37) It led to an interesting debate about the nature of poverty in the UK from some of those commenting on his blog, and there were a couple of good articles on the BBC website.

Don Paskini on Liberal Conspiracy and Duncan’s economic blog were supportive of our proposals, and again there’s an interesting debate going on in the comments to Don’s blog.

Tom Watson MP had some nice things to say about Oxfam’s role in pursuing this agenda. Living with Rats has a neat comparison with the other Fred (Goodwin). And Nicola Smith at the TUC takes a look at the importance of attitudes to FRED.

Meanwhile the Adam Smith Institute (who Antonia argued with live on BBC TV!) support our proposals on tax, but are less keen on more spending to support FRED – as are a host of less savoury blogs that FRED would prefer we didn’t mention.

In the papers, FRED got a mention in the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Daily Record, and FRED was featured on Good Morning Scotland, BBC Five Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News and BBC News channel, as well as loads of local commercial and BBC radio stations, and a host of local newspapers.

We’re hoping the debate can continue in the coming weeks and months. If you’re not following FRED on twitter yet, or following this blog, then please do so. Unfortunately, we think FRED will be around for a good while longer, but the budget in a couple of weeks will be the first test of whether the government is looking out for FRED.

We’re introducing the world to FRED today to symbolise the people in the UK least equipped to cope with the effects of recession. FREDs have different back stories and experiences: they may have been living below the poverty line before the economy went downhill, or they may have been getting by. They could be men or women, older or younger, working or not working. What they have in common, though, is that they’re vulnerable.

Unless we act now, this recession could take away FREDs’ jobs, their incomes, their homes – and their life chances. Once these things have gone, they’re hard to replace – and people who suffer the worst effects of a recession often don’t ever recover.

As well as introducing FRED, we’ve set out in a briefing, launched today, what we’d like to see the government do to help people like her. We’ll be blogging on how the recession will affect different people in the days and weeks ahead, and talking more about what we’d like to see from Alistair Darling in this month’s Budget.

If you’d like to find out more about FRED, you can follow her on Twitter, as well as downloading a range of resources from her page on the Oxfam website.

Politicians have already accepted that times are extraordinary, and that business as usual is no longer an option. We’ve seen a huge rescue package for the banks and financial sector. But while the British economy needs help, so too do FREDs. We’re calling on the UK government to put Oxfam’s six-point rescue plan into action.