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| Social Inclusion
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| Introduction |
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One of the biggest challenges facing society is how to share the social and economic wealth around to build communities in which everyone can belong, contribute and be valued.
If social cohesion is to do with infrastructures on an institutional
level, then social inclusion relates to belonging and membership at an
interpersonal and collective level. Thus the strength of community membership
and identity is central to community inclusion: a community with only weak
community inclusion will not have the resources to be meaningfully included in
society in its own right
This will involve tackling the causes of social exclusion: poverty, discrimination, inequality and lack of opportunity.Social inclusion does not happen by accident, or overnight. It requires sustained political commitment and government leadership, including through building action partnerships across government, business, the community sector and local communities.
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| Barriers |
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We acknowledge the potentially problematic nature of citizenship,
which might be too passive or defensive a concept to incorporate what is meant
by ‘social inclusion’, because it infers a more involved participation. Such
participation has three dimensions:
material - the possibility to articulate and defend specific interests,
procedural - the guarantee of public and private autonomy,
personal - voluntary participation.
Institutional e.g opening hours, staff attitude, rules and regulations, charges, book stock policy, facilities e.g disabled access access
Personal and Social e.g lack of basic skills (reading, writing), low income and poverty, lack of permanent address
Perceptions and awareness e.g people who are educationally disadvantaged, people who don’t think libraries are relevant to their lives or needs, lack of knowledge of facilities and services, or how to use them
Environmental e.g difficult access to building, poor transport links, institutional nature of building
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| Indicators |
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Social indicators can serve a range of purposes related to vision, budgeting, community
mobilisation, agency accountability and public education (Leichter et al 2002). By
considering changes over time, social indicators are a critical tool in the development,
assessment and monitoring of social policy. They can describe, in quantitative and
qualitative terms, the level of social development achieved in a particular society and the
current extent of social problems (Vandenbrouke 2001).
The benefits of indicators lie in their capacity to inform and guide policy-making and
resource allocation choices. Selecting, monitoring and reporting on indicators can focus
government attention on future priorities including government policymaking and
accountability processes. Construction of indicators will further our understanding of
where and why progress towards social inclusion is being achieved or frustrated. In
addition, analysis of the underlying source data will help identify problem areas that
require responses at the policy, program and community development levels. Indicators
can also be a powerful catalyst for action by facilitating collaboration among different
interests, particularly public-private collaboration at the local level.
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Domains
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Sub-domains
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Citizenship rights
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Constitutional rights
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Social rights
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Civil rights
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Economic and Political rights
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Labour markets
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Access to paid employment
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Services
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Health services
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Housing
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Education
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Social care
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Financial services
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Transport
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Civic and cultural services
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Social networks
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Neighbourhood participation
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Friendships
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Family life
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