Transcript Presentation title to go here in 40pt Trebuchet Regular

Can a childcare social enterprise mend a
broken society?
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
The Broken Society…
“It’s about our refusal as a society to protect and honour childhood.
“When the child’s parents abused and humiliated we were not there to stop it.
When the child turned to us for help, our services were under resourced, often
emotionally thoughtless and unwittingly repeating the abuse again.
“Too may abandoned children have been left to fend for themselves, like scavenging
dogs fighting for morsels of intervention.
“Our contribution to this abuse is our complacency, our facile arguments, our
pseudo-debates, our cosmetic short term initiatives, our offensive neutrality,
our readiness to perceive ourselves as victims, denying the children’s damage.”
Batmanghelidjh (2006)
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
What do we mean by poverty?
“Poverty is not a certain amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between
means and ends; above all it is a relation between people.
“Poverty is a social status …it has grown…as an invidious distinction
between the classes.”
Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Child Poverty
3.9 million children live in poverty in Britain
= 30% of all children
www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/keyfacts
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
“Investing in early years is as close as it gets to magic without being magic.
“Parenting support and enriched day care, preferably both together create
children with better behaviour and attitudes who will arrive at school
with a capacity to learn”
Sinclair (2006)
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SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
A solution?
“No one really believes that a few minor reforms will do the trick. We probably need a
committed social movement lasting 20 years or so but we lack an analysis which
could inspire and guide it.”
Wilkinson; Radical Economics Issue 41 (09)
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
The Social Enterprise Model
According to the DTI, Social enterprises:
“Are businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally
reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being
driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.”
Such businesses are seen as contributing to:
• raising productivity and competitiveness;
• socially inclusive wealth creation;
• enabling individuals and communities to foster local regeneration;
• demonstrating new ways to deliver public services;
• fostering an inclusive society with an active citizenship
In addition, where social enterprises involve local people as members, in
democratic forms of organisation, they are claimed to have an important
social purpose, helping to develop active citizenship.
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Social enterprise is about people. Social entrepreneurs run profitable
businesses that reject exploitation and
instead choose to invest in society’s
most disadvantaged people. ”
Allison Ogden-Newton, Social Enterprise London
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Social Enterprise:
A Force for Creating Enterprise and Jobs
“Social Enterprise is a business model of the times that is attracting talent and
capital: an evolution of capitalism that we should welcome.”
Nick Hurd, Shadow Minister for Charities, SE and Volunteering
Charity Times, August 2009 (p6)
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The Community
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
The big risk: what community?
“…informal networks of shared meaning which hold some intrinsic value for
their members”
Craig & O’Leary (2005, p137)
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
If you are poor and live in a bad neighbourhood,
here are your chances…
15% of babies will not have a resident biological father
75% more likely to fail at school
70% more likely to be drug addicts
50% more likely to be alcoholic
40% serious debt problems
35% dependent on welfare / unemployed
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A Social Enterprise
Pedagogy
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
What do we want from education?
•
Is it to secure social justice through a focus on the rights and needs of the
individual and so designing a system that responds to each person irrespective of
social or economic status?
•
Is to maximise the economic well-being of society by maximising the number of
highly qualified individuals who are ready for employment?
•
Is to ensure the transmission of cultural norms and values from one generation to
another through a focus on the historical and moral inheritance?
Gardner (2006, p43)
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Is social capital the basis for a social
enterprise childcare setting?
“…Child development is powerfully shaped by social capital…trust, networks and
norms of reciprocity within a child’s family, school, peer groups and larger
community have wide ranging effects on the child’s opportunities and choices and ,
hence behaviour and development”
Putnam (2000, p296)
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Will it produce children fit for purpose?
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•
Literate, numerate and comfortable with information technology
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Capable of gathering, organising and deploying information
•
Able to analyse, synthesise and construct an argument to demonstrate
understanding
•
Able to think creatively and be comfortable with change, innovation and
problem solving
•
Confident about his or her own identity and value as a person and able
to respect this in others
•
Secure in personal relationships, able to work in groups and can
contribute to the wider community
•
Able to articulate personal values and spiritual understanding
•
Able to demonstrate a deep respect for humanity and what it means to
be human
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
What needs to be in the SE Curriculum?
• Lead Differently
• Healthy Relationships at the Centre
• Empathetic Attachment
• Food for Thought
• Cultural Capital
• Empowering the Community
• Collaborative problem- solving
• Education and Employment
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
A Basic SE Offer
• A local childcare service
• Strong community roots, more able to reach the vulnerable
• Local involvement through volunteering
• Flexible, innovative and responsive to filling gaps
• History of multi-disciplinary working
• Training and qualification offer
• Local employment
• Intergenerational programmes
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Next Challenge
Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
What Next?
“Of course, though, people with long-term stakes
don’t always act wisely.
“Often they still prefer short-term goals, and
often again they do things that are foolish in
both the short term and the long term. That’s
what makes biography and history infinitely more
complicated and less predictable that the course
of reactions…
“Leaders who don’t just react passively, who
have the courage to anticipate crisis or to act
early, and who make strong insightful decisions
of top-down management really can make a huge
difference to their societies.
“So can similarly courageous, active citizens
practising bottom-up management.”
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Can a childcare social enterprise mend a broken society?
24 September 2009
Let’s go forward
“Our task is to inspire a movement for change by addressing the
fundamentals, showing that there are viable alternatives, that
problems can be solved and the world can be a better place.”
Wilkinson; Radical Economics (Issue 41, 2009)
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