Poverty and inequality are financial challenges for local authorities and threaten the cohesion of their communities.
The Government's Social Mobility Commission's Time for Change report on 'socially divided' Britain offers five key lessons which include making social mobility a central government goal by focusing on long term progress, allowing changes to take effect, and playing an interventionist role in regional development.
This briefing focuses on early intervention and family literacy, summarising key barriers to attainment for disadvantaged socio-economic groups, and highlighting practical strategies with which LAs can provide coordinated strategic responses.
Since April 2016, Ofsted and CQC have been inspecting local areas to assess how well the new arrangements for Special Educational Needs and Disability (under the Children and Families Act 2014) are being implemented; 31 local areas have been inspected and this briefing takes an overview of the inspection letters of findings.
This week saw the publication of LGiU’s report with the Fawcett Society on whether English and Welsh local government is working for women – the end result of a year-long Commission.
2018 marks the centenary of the Representation of the People Act, which gave votes to some women for the first time. But nearly 100 years on, we are still struggling to get to a position of equality when it comes to women’s political representation, writes Lauren Lucas.
This report is the result of a year-long study led by the Fawcett Society in partnership with the Local Government Information Unit, which asked ‘Does Local Government Work for Women?’ and contains recommendations to help solve the issues faced by women in town halls.
This briefing is an update on state (school) and charitable meals provision for children using two recent reports which show the need to ensure children and families receive adequate nourishment if they are to benefit from education and not go hungry both in school and in school holidays.
Government legislation will require primary schools to teach relationships education and secondary schools sex and relationships from September 2019. This briefing looks at the background to the new law and how the Government will introduce it.
In its purest form, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a universal and unconditional cash transfer from the state to its citizens. Its advocates see it as a solution to long-standing problems of social security. This briefing reports on UBI experiments underway in Finland and Ontario.
Everyone knows that local authority budgets are being squeezed from all directions, but less well understood from an Irish perspective, are the variety of council services that will be reduced or cut in order to keep ‘essential’ services operating. This briefing explores the UK context of this.
