Participle

Ella (not her real name) lives in Swindon. She is the mother within one of Britain’s so called chaotic families. The government estimates that there were over 120,000 families like Ella’s in Britain, struggling to break a cycle of social, economic and emotional deprivation. The treasury has focused on these families under both the last and the current government, due to their cost, estimated to be £35 billion annually.

Ella lives in a mean and cramped house on a run-down estate - there are no shops, the pub closed years ago, the playground is desolate and never used. Inside Ella’s house the tension is palpable and the noise levels deafening. The TV is on at full volume, Ella’s older son is fighting with one of her daughters, another keeps up a constant stream of abuse from the kitchen. The dogs are locked behind a bedroom door.

Ella is stuck - she has lived with crisis for forty years - she knows nothing else and she knows no way out. Abused by her father, she has since lived with four abusive partners of her own. One of her children has been removed by social services and the three who remain with her suffer from a range of problems. None are in full-time education or working. Ella, rather like the welfare state she knows so well, desperately needs a radical plan to build a way out so her children do not repeat the cycle, as she is repeating her own mother’s history. It is only a matter of time before grandchildren appear - whether they can expect a different future is the real question we might ask of welfare reform.

Members of the Participle team have spent time living alongside Ella and other families like hers over the last two years because we are interested in what we can learn from the places where the need is greatest, and where the welfare state in its current form seems most challenged. We have found again and again that if we can design solutions that work with those most in need, we can create solutions that will work for many.

Ella’s family and the many others like hers are a manifestation of the breakdown between the state and the citizen. The constant visits and delivery of messages do not constitute a conversation, and the families do not feel properly listened to or understood. Asked to change, the families have no lived experience of what this might feel like; and, worse still, they know that these commands are accompanied by the dead weight of expectation that they can’t change - ‘this family will never change’, it was explained to us.

To read our approach on how to support Ella's families, read more here.