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Ground-breaking studies regularly chart the terrain of deprivation and social need and make invaluable long-term policy recommendations. The result? More often than not, they are shunted into the sidings or only partially implemented a decade down the line.

The 1974 Finer Committee on Single Parents, for instance, produced over 200 recommendations almost all of them ignored. Six years later, Sir Douglas Black's report on the state of the nation's health and the growing gap between the rich and poor was tragically greeted with government inertia.


This week, David Darton, Donald Hirsch and Jason Strelitz publish Tackling Disadvantage: A 20-Year Enterprise. It is a powerful piece of work intended to trigger a debate on what ought be done over the next two decades in six key areas, among them education, family poverty and long-term care.

Its thrust is to challenge the government's present preoccupation with middle England and prioritise the needs of the most deprived boldly and unequivocally. For instance, it recommends greater investment in schools in disadvantaged areas; more generous financial support for those who have good reason not to be in paid work; and some system, such as a national care insurance scheme - already rejected by government - that will give poor people access to good quality long-term care.

At present, 70 per cent of care for older people is on an unpaid basis. In 20 years, however, by the time the post-war baby boomer generation are ageing, that source of support may be hugely diminished. Families will be more fragmented; sons and daughters may themselves be older parents of young children while the duty to care may have been much diluted.


A report last week confirmed that more than 80 per cent of patients in old people's homes are being administered powerful tranquillisers they do not need. Diverse and flexible support for older people cannot and should not be left to the private sector.

Tackling Disadvantage: A 20-Year Enterprise is rich in imaginative proposals: a strong catalyst for change. But what's the betting that in 2023, when this generation of ministers are drawing their lavish pensions, the rest of us will be wondering whatever happened to so many of its excellent ideas?

Tackling Disadvantage: A 20-Year Enterprise is available from www.jrf.org.uk