{"id":1064,"date":"2025-10-18T13:45:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T13:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/?p=1064"},"modified":"2025-10-19T20:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T20:13:07","slug":"social-issues-that-dont-seem-to-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/?p=1064","title":{"rendered":"Social issues that don&#8217;t seem to go away"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I was setting out of this great creative adventure, there were a range of social issues that seemed to linger and linger despite repeated commitments by governments, councils and local managers to really tackle the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listing these at the outset gave me an agenda that I could puzzle over. Clearly these weren&#8217;t going to be fixed by me thinking, even over fifteen years. Maybe, though, I could help others think about them differently &#8211; through talking to others, through jottings, through addressing some of the issues via my books &#8230;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was my initial list and. sadly, it remains pretty much the same list fifteen years later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some groups of young people are proportionally underemployed and socially marginalised \u2013 with a sense that they might form a \u2018lost generation\u2019<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some poorer people are locked in mechanisms that \u2018pump\u2019 money away from them, towards the more rich and powerful: and they are then stigmatised for that<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Many good social intentions fade in their implementation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Approaches to the provision of sufficient adequate housing don\u2019t appear to offer robust solutions<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fundamental cultures can clash, intentionally or otherwise, to the detriment of those involved<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some localities appear to be doomed forever not to flourish<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are few ways of agreeing about \u2018Value\u2019 despite it being seen as important<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Children are growing up negatively affected by poverty \u2013 yet few real, immediate solutions seem to exist as widespread practice<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Future risks have been highlighted (re food, water, environment, technologies etc) \u2013 but there are few agreed ways forward for dealing with these<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Decision-makers are increasingly distanced from the situations about which they are being asked to decide<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Leaders and managers are expected to operate within contexts that are more flexible and contingent than the situations they have been prepared\/trained for: so things don\u2019t progress at the scale and pace possible<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some \u2018wicked\u2019 problems are acknowledged as having complicated, inter-related causes, yet the complexity of solutions is underappreciated<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Learning models lag behind learning needs and learning potentials \u2013 with too many intermediary influences interfering with possible progress<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Services are conceptualised, organised and delivered on the basis of what has happened in the past rather than what is needed in the future<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Knowledge of the \u2018right ways forward\u2019 is likely to be ambiguous and uncertain \u2013 the most that can be hoped for is \u2018best yet\u2019 understandings within particular contexts<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Storytelling is a valid way of planning in response to predicaments<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anti-social activities constantly find new forms; but those responsible for countering it are left using outmoded tools to do the job<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Many things come down to the \u2018individualised\u2019 level; but are conceptualised\/formulated at the \u2018group\u2019 level \u2013 whilst solutions may be at the \u2018structural\u2019 level<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Notions of \u2018public\u2019 and \u2018private\u2019 are coalescing and becoming unreliable in their use<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was setting out of this great creative adventure, there were a range of social issues that seemed to linger and linger despite repeated commitments by governments, councils and local managers to really tackle the problem. Listing these at the outset gave me an agenda that I could puzzle over. Clearly these weren&#8217;t going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1064"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewordsthething.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}