Too Many UK Households Still Living Below the Poverty Level Despite Record Levels of Employment.

Millions of households across the UK are living below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS), despite record levels of employment.

Figures provided by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in a report, Households Below a Minimum Income Standard; 2008/09-2017/18, written by Matt Padley and Juliet Stone show some 18.7 million households living below MIS.

Lone parents, pensioners and adults aged between 16 and 34 are most likely to be affected. Also affected are households living in social housing or private rental accommodation.

Employment figures published by the Office for National Statistics this week show that 76% of the UK population is in work (32.54 million people) is in work, the highest number since 1971.

Despite these record levels of employment 17.8% of households living below the MIS are in full time work, up from 11.8% in 2008/09. Workless households in the same position have risen from 48.6% to 60.3% over the same period.

The Minimum Income Standard represents the minimum socially acceptable standard of living.

The number of individuals in the UK living below the MIS has increased every year since 2008/09.

Figures released by the Trussell Trust, the charity running many UK food banks illustrate the impact of poverty on the health and life chances of individuals and families.

The mid-year statistics published by the Trussell Trust and based on a survey of 1100 people who used their food banks between April and September 2019 along with evidence from volunteers and referring agencies paint a stark picture.

94% of clients said they were facing real deprivation, meaning they could not afford to buy essentials. From these three quarters were in rent arrears, two thirds had been subject to benefit delays or sanctions and half were living in single person households. Most, 75%, reported experiencing at least one physical or mental health problem.

Food bank usage is not limited to individuals and households who are receiving out of work benefits. Being in full time work is no guarantee of financial security thanks to short term contracts and the growth of the gig-economy.

Creating an economy that gives a fair chance to all its actors and a social security system that protects the most vulnerable people is the major challenge facing the government. One that if it fails to meet will create economic and social instability that could last for decades.

Parity of Esteem: Three Little Words Looking for a Larger Meaning.

Being diagnosed with a mental health condition can have an adverse effect of an individual's life chances. These can range from struggling to find or maintain work though fractured relationships to a lower life expectancy.

There is also a major impact on wider society of unmet mental health needs, for example, according to the Centre for Mental Health time off due to workplace stress cost UK employers £34.9million in 2016/17.

For the past decade there has been an emphasis of achieving 'parity of esteem', for mental illness to be accorded regard and resources matching those devoted to treating physical illnesses. In 2011 the then coalition government set out an expectation of 'parity of esteem' in its No Health Without Mental Health policy, in 2013 a similar commitment was written into the NHS Constitution for England.

To date though despite all the warm words and sincere promises delivery on the ground has been patchy to non-existent.

There is no uniform measure for how mental health services are delivered. Waiting times, an established if sometimes crude benchmark for performance in the NHS, are, apparently, impossible to correlate. Access to many services are not even subject to maximum waiting time standards.

A bigger problem is that Clinical Commissioning Groups, the bodies controlling th ding for a given area, do not have to ring fence money allocated to mental health services. The official line is that that funding should grow in line with that devoted to physical health services, often though the mental health budget is often raided to plug gaps elsewhere.

There are also some practical gaps that get in the way of parity of esteem becoming a reality. These include patchy diagnosis, GPs, usually the first medical professional someone asking support for their mental health will see have little training in this area. The days of busy doctors telling people to 'pull yourself together' may, thankfully, he mostly in the past. Unfortunately, they seem to have been replaced by one's where equally busy, if not busier ones, reach for the pill cupboard instead.

There is also the Dracula like ability of the stigma surrounding mental illness to keep resurrecting itself. Public awareness and understanding may have improved; but old prejudices did hard if they die at all.

In time for the last general election the Centre for Mental Health published its Towards Mental Health Equality report. This called on the incoming government to, amongst other things, create a cross party plan to embed an understanding of its likely impact on mental health in all areas of policy making.

This is a noble and necessary aspiration, unfortunately it's also one that is likely to founder on the rocks of official indifference. At least it is without a significant change in mind-set and actions.

Professionals, support groups and individual service users need to stop seeking salvation in a form of words. 'Parity of esteem' is as meaningless as all those other phrases that tell a marginalised group to accept less than their due and to smile as they do it.

The mental health community needs to learn from the liberation movements, that their political power exists and is embodied in their willingness to be difficult. It isn't good enough to be promised better services will be delivered on some tomorrow that never arrives; they need to be provided now.

'Parity of esteem' is meaningless, the real battle is for esteem for everyone.

How Will Our New MPs Deal with This City's Old Problems?

Figures published late last week show that children born in Stoke-on-Trent are twice as likely to die in the first year of life as in almost any other part of the country.

The city has an infant mortality rate of 8.1 deaths in every 1000 live births, the national average is 3.9 In 2016, the last year for which figures are available there were 26 infant deaths out of 3293 live births.

Speaking to the Sentinel Dr Paul Edmonds-Jones director of adult social care, health integration and wellbeing for the city council said: 'a lot of work is taking place in the city to address this issue.'

Poor public health, poverty and poor housing have been cited as contributing factors to the high rate of infant mortality.

That a city like Stoke-on-Trent has a worryingly high infant mortality rate is shocking, but, sadly, not surprising. This city has been in the grip of serious societal problems for decades.

Mix that with the fall-out from ten years of austerity and it is hardly surprising that the most vulnerable people, children, are suffering.

It prompts an important question about the new political settlement, how will the city's three new Tory MPs deal with this city's old problems?

These include poor physical and mental health, low educational attainment, poor housing, and pockets of deep and intractable poverty. Added to this is an unspoken, but powerful, feeling that second best is more than we have a right to ask for.

The problems this city faces have taken decades to build up and will take as long again to resolve. They will also need considerable government investment delivered over a sustained period

That presents Jack Brereton, Jonathan Gullis and Jo Gideon with some major problems, solving which or failing to do so could decide their long-term future

The Conservative Party had a deep-seated antipathy towards 'big government' seeing it as the embodiment of interfering bureaucracy. Yet only the government had the reach of resources to solve the problems of cities like Stoke-on-Trent.

The standard Tory practice of delivering pious homilies about people 'pulling themselves up by their boot-straps' doesn't cut much mustard if you can't afford boots in the first place.

Government, big or small riding to the rescue of forgotten towns doesn't fit too well with the MO of their mercurial party leader PM Boris Johnson. The Johnson doctrine, such as it is, is to go in quick, grab all the low hanging fruit and milk the situation for every drop of publicity, then get out even quicker before any adverse consequences of your actions become apparent.

That play won't work with problems that have taken years to build to a head and will need as long again to resolve. Johnson may have promised to be in the corner of the UK's forgotten towns when the flashbulbs were popping on election night; he won't be there for the long haul.

Not unless his marching corps of new MPs representing constituencies nobody expected to turn blue go into bat for them anyway. If the rest are like our three amigos that's what they promised to do on election night.

Now it is time for words to be turned into action; the sort of action that could stop a promising career in its tracks. Two of their number will have to face that possibility if they are to be even halfway creditable representatives

Having shifted once the tectonic plates of politics can do so again and probably much more easily this time. The new Tories sitting for surprising seats will have to risk standing up to be counted; or face the possibility of getting counted out.