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Person or place-based policies to tackle disadvantage? Not knowing what works March 15, 2008

Posted by western4uk in Deprivation, Education, Equity, Grey Literature, Health Economics, Poverty, Public Health, Social Exclusion.
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Person or place-based policies to tackle disadvantage? Not knowing what works from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looks at the effectiveness of policies introduced by the Labour government since 1997 to encourage employment, education and reducing income disadvantage, focusing on policies that explicitly take account of people and places.

It finds that person and place-based policies have mostly developed separately and often in isolation from each other. This separation does not reflect the relationships between places and the poverty and disadvantage of people who live in them.

Key findings

  • Most policy interventions, whether person or place-targeted, had small, favourable impacts. In the rare cases where information on expenditure was available, costs were generally offset by savings to the Exchequer.
  • Both forms of intervention had significant positive impacts on particular aspects of education results and employment. However, it was not possible to determine whether person or place-based policies were better, as they tended to have different objectives that prevented direct comparison.
  • Some interventions had negative consequences for the average participant or detrimental effects on some groups of participants.
  • It was rarely possible to explain properly how policy interventions worked or why they failed, because the way they were intended to work.
  • Evaluators judged policies to have the greatest impact if they delivered individually tailored support to the most disadvantaged people with minimal complexity. The evaluators considered policies successful if they reflected local needs and priorities and were shaped by active engagement with stakeholders, including end users.

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