---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 10:19:22 +0000
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: LETS get serious - a result!
Econ-lets readers will be please to hear that LETS is getting right
to the mainstream of UK Government policy.
The UKs 'social exclusion unit' , a research and policy co-ordinating
unit in the Prime Minister's office has a remit to devise new
solutions and ways of working to fight social exclusion. Its just
published its report "Bringing Britain Together - a national strategy
for neighbourhood renewal' that proposes 17 pilot initiatives to test
new ways of fighting social exclusion, and 18 cross departmental
study teams to draw together a national strategy, find out what
works, promote new ideas. Its quite breathtaking stuff, and for
those of us who have been waiting with baited breath for something
from a hitherto disappointing Blair Government, is shows promise.
I was quite supprised to see LETS is way up there in the remit of the
'Getting People to Work - Jobs' team (one of the 18 cross
cutting research teams). I'd expected it to be in the 'community
self-help' section. LETS seems at last to have made it into the
paradigm of 'hard economic development' rather than softer, social
aspects its often consigned to. Its a real step forward!
Its gratifying as we have been saying for a long time that LETS is an
exceptionally powerfull tool for people who have not worked for a
long time, and who frankly are not yet ready for a full time job to
polish up the skills they have but are unused, raise their
confidence, meet people from a wider social circle (research shows
that unemployed people tend, in time, to know only other unemployed
people as they don't have the money to socialise and do all the things
those in work take for granted - and as many many jobs are got by
friends of friends, its a real problem).
Weve also at times got a reaction that 'serious' economic development
is 'proper jobs' with 'proper wages' in the mainstream economy; and
that things like LETS are in danger of settling unemployed people
into a 'second rate' economy given that currently LETS units arn't
as spendable as mainstream money due to the lack of business
participation. Government recognising LETS is a way back into
work, and not a 'social service' is therefore a real step forward.
Pete
_________________________________________
Peter North
School of Urban Development and Policy
South Bank University, London
Tel: 0171-815 7706
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
