On 12^th September our first event about life chances took place on the university campus, to discuss the potential opportunity from the life chances agenda. The participants included nearly 50 people from universities, local government and other organisations in the region, as well as colleagues already part of the project. The aim was to identify where we thought there was opportunity to do something new with the agenda and how best to proceed by engaging with other interested groups.

We were pleased to have an introduction from Mark Shucksmith, the Director of Newcastle University’s Institute for Social Renewal (NISR) which has sponsored the project and the cost of the event itself. Mark identified that he had used Max Weber’s original theory about life chances in his thesis several decades earlier, and that this had been contesting Marx’s solely structural interpretation of society. While the term has been appropriated by others now, the original theoretical development has something to offer still, and there is a geographical aspect to structural factors for life chances in rural populations.

The principal feature of the afternoon was a presentation from Moussa Haddad, one of the policy officers of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). Moussa outlined how the life chances agenda related to the work on poverty CPAG is renowned for, and how this affected many different areas of children’s lives. A fuller description of Moussa’s talk, and the slides from his presentation, will feature as a future blog, but the political story is still evolving. And CPAG will be launching a book in October which includes chapters on each of the different themes, from such luminaries as Michael Marmot who wrote the health chapter, and Alan Milburn who writes about social mobility.

The view that there was evidence and data about these issues which the development of policy continued to ignore was debated in the context of how we might go forward. One suggestion is to have a future event, perhaps engaging with the Social Metrics Commission, to talk about data, measurement and life chances indicators. There is of course the risk that increasing the number of indicators can dilute the focus on structural factors of poverty which drive others which do not constitute a root cause.

While we are still waiting for the coherent launch of a government life chances strategy, originally planned by David Cameron for 24^th June 2016, some aspects are already appearing. The same day as the event the Department for Education launched a consultation on ‘good schools for everyone’, embracing the population and opportunity principles of life chances, while not using the term. While this includes the controversial issue of selection, it also engages with the idea of measuring disadvantaged families who are struggling but not below the free school meals threshold.

The project team expressed a view that this is an opportunity to do one thing which is new, which is to ask children about their views on life chances. The difference is that this could cut across a full range of children, as all have life chances, but look for more diverse ideas of opportunity than joining the elite, whether that be as a company CEO, high court judge, MP or journalist. While this sort of inquiry may be suited to universities, it is striking that current rhetoric has not seen any agency for children, but choice for parents and early interventions to be prioritised by services.

Sara Walker also highlighted the structural factor of housing and how it affected children and families was limited in focus at present, which will be a feature of a future blog. Fuel poverty had typically been applied to the ageing population, and in any case this related to the use of the housing and how much time was spent inside. Cold homes have a physical effect on younger children but this shifts to stress and emotional effects for older children as it limits their socialisation. A change in the definition to include low income high cost had reduced the numbers considered to be in fuel poverty, while moving some into that category who had not been so before.

A particular issue raised in discussion in more than one way was about autonomy, and how life chances have an implication of individual agency, which should be worth developing in future. While this has many practical implications in terms of rights of people, and how the life chances of parents can affect the life chances of children, it has a deeper implication about how we consider social policy.

John Veit-Wilson, retired from Newcastle University, and the only surviving founding member of CPAG, gave some closing remarks to conclude the event. While John will also elaborate on this in a future blog, he raised some specific points about how for all its eloquent evangelism, life chances was very similar to what was really meant by past discourse about poverty, as opposed to administrative accounting for it.

In general, there was some enthusiasm for a network to make further progress by engaging with responding to consultations and policy developments. However, the focus on children which would be natural to some of the team is less than what is desired by the wider group attending the event, and we will be looking at how to incorporate wider issues like autonomy. There are specific projects already proceeding about housing, and there is the advantage that housing, or more precisely home, affects the lives, and the life chances of all.

At present we are looking at arranging future events, making use of opportunities presented by other events which will bring external speakers to the university. Leon Feinstein (Director of Evidence at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England) will be giving a public lecture in the university Insight series on 21^st March 2017. We hope to organise another afternoon event to include some input from Leon on that day but we are also looking at the possibility of a further event on 8^th December.