Latest news with #CSJ
Leader Live
21-07-2025
- General
- Leader Live
WeMindTheGap up for Centre for Social Justice Award
WeMindTheGap, which supports young people who have fallen through the gaps, has been nominated for a Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) Award. The CSJ Awards seek out the top charities nationwide, highlighting those that excel in innovation and effectiveness in the fight against poverty. The diverse panel of judges includes Akshata Murty, Rachel Riley and past CSJ Award winners along with experts from various sectors that come together to select the winners. Read more: Wrexham baby charity's milestone with 300th hamper The awards celebrate the best of the small charity sector who are providing innovative policy solutions to address the root causes of poverty across the UK. WeMindTheGap gives new opportunities to young people 11-25yrs who deserve better. It fills the gaps in young people's lives, supporting them into employment, education, and independent lives. The charity's life changing programmes give under-served young people, paid work, mentoring, skills, confidence and connections. Ali Wheeler, CEO of WeMindtheGap, said: "We are thrilled to have been chosen as a finalist in the 2025 CSJ Awards recognising the work we do to support young people who have fallen through the gaps in life, it is recognition that the young people we have the privilege to walk alongside matter, are seen and heard, and will give them more opportunities to influence their lives and futures generations." Read more: Wrexham woman set to take on 500k cycle in memory of late husband Andy Cook, CEO of the Centre for Social Justice, added: "While Westminster is in chaos and the rest of the world in convulsions, there's an army of small charities in some of our most challenged communities picking up the pieces and solving real-life problems. "The CSJ Awards are the Oscars of the small charity sector, celebrating the best of the best of those unsung heroes. "We are proud to announce our 12 2025 finalists. We will be announcing the five winners at our glittering CSJ Awards ceremony in the heart of Westminster this November." Read more: Dog rescued by Flintshire animal centre after 'awful start to life' looking for home Rachel Riley MBE, co-presenter of Countdown, said: "It's a real pleasure to be back on the CSJ Awards Judging Panel for the second consecutive year! Yet again, this year's finalists have blown us away. The panel had a lively, three-hour debate, and I am confident that the winners are going to make a difference with the money, recognition and contacts that becoming a CSJ Award Winner brings. "I'm really looking forward to meeting all the finalists in Westminster this November - they all deserve to be celebrated."
The Independent
19-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Andy Burnham calls on Starmer to tackle ‘explosion of homelessness'
Rough sleeping has almost doubled since Covid, a damning report found, with Andy Burnham calling on Sir Keir Starmer to make tackling homelessness a 'moral mission'. The Greater Manchester mayor piled pressure on the prime minister to follow the success of the region offering housing to the homeless. 'If you set people up to succeed – they largely do,' Mr Burnham said. He added: 'Tackling homelessness is not just an economic imperative, but also a moral mission.' Mr Burnham's calls came as a report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) warned of an 'explosion in homelessness' following the pandemic. It found a 94 per cent increase in rough sleeping since Covid, with around 47,000 people sleeping on the streets in England in the last year. The CSJ warned rough sleeping is 'just the tip of the iceberg', with councils across the country spending billions on temporary accommodation and being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. Labour's manifesto promised to 'put Britain back on track to ending homelessness' after saying progress tackling the crisis was undone under the Conservatives. It committed to working with mayors and councils across the country on a strategy to end rough sleeping. The CSJ called on Labour to adopt a so-called Housing First approach similar to Greater Manchester's, which provides the homeless with immediate, unconditional access to permanent housing and ongoing support. 'Housing First has been shown to be the most effective and well-evidenced intervention to end homelessness for Britain's most disadvantaged and entrenched rough sleepers,' the report said. It found that Housing First is three and a half times more effective than conventional homelessness services, with 84 per cent of users sustaining long-term housing after three years in the programme. Rolling out Housing First across England would take 5,571 people off the streets by 2029/30, around a tenth of all rough sleepers. And the CSJ said it is 'excellent value for money', with every £1 spent freeing up £2 in temporary accommodation and other costs. CSJ chief executive Andy Cook said: 'Housing First has emerged as one of the most effective approaches to ending rough sleeping. Angela Rayner now has a unique opportunity to champion a national rollout which would be a gamechanger in the fight to end rough sleeping.' And Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, whose region has also trialled Housing First, said: 'We've proven it works. Now we need to match that with ambition, and make it the foundation of a national mission to end homelessness for good.' And the Steve Morgan Foundation, which supports charities, said Housing First had been 'transformative' and 'it is now time for the government to take this success to the rest of England'. Chairman Steve Morgan said: 'I know firsthand the importance of a stable home. Without one, nothing else in life works, not your health, not your relationships, and not your ability to find or keep a job. That's why I believe Housing First holds the key to tackling rough sleeping in England.' A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: 'We are taking urgent and decisive action to end homelessness, fix the foundations of local government and drive forward our Plan for Change. 'We are providing £1bn for crucial homelessness and rough sleeping services including funding for Housing First and other forms of accommodation for people who sleep rough. 'This is alongside tackling the root causes by building 1.5 million new homes, abolishing section 21 no fault evictions and boosting social and affordable housing – backed by £39bn investment.'
Zawya
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Zawya
Mr Chaib participates in a virtual meeting organised for the national community in Moscow
The Secretary of State to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in charge of the National Community Abroad, Sofiane Chaib, took part, alongside the Minister of Youth, in charge of the Higher Council of Youth (CSJ), Mustapha Hidaoui, in a virtual meeting organized for young Algerians living abroad, in coordination with the Algerian embassy in Moscow. This virtual meeting is part of a series of activities organized by the CSJ for this segment of the national community, in collaboration and coordination with Algerian diplomatic and consular missions abroad. In his welcome address, Chaib praised the added value of this type of activity that aims to strengthen ties with young people in the diaspora through a participatory approach to important issues. The Secretary of State also highlighted the priority given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to this important matter, noting the attention paid to maintaining permanent contact with young people in our overseas community and implementing measures and initiatives aimed at bolstering their ties with the homeland and benefiting from their diverse experiences for national development. Chaib said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will spare no effort on its part to examine all proposals that will be made during this meeting, which will be followed by other similar meetings in the future with young people of the diaspora. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People's Democratic Republic of Algeria.
Spectator
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
English schools are failing disadvantaged children
Education should be the great equaliser – the ladder with which all children, regardless of circumstances of birth, can improve themselves and, by doing so, climb towards a more prosperous future. It was certainly that way for me. I loved learning, and my state education took me from humble beginnings in Clacton-on-Sea to working in Westminster. Fixing this system will not be politically easy … but political difficulty is no excuse for inaction But not all children are so lucky. Despite England's significant success at raising overall attainment over the past decade, the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils has stubbornly remained – despite the significant sums of money spent on the problem. New research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) highlights the issue. The average Attainment 8 score – calculated by adding together pupils' highest scores from eight government-approved GCSE subjects – for disadvantaged pupils was 37 in 2016/17, 12.8 points lower than that for all other pupils. By 2023/24, this gap had risen to 14.4 points, the widest point for seven years. Much of the progress that began under the coalition government has since been reversed, and by 2023 disadvantaged secondary school pupils were over a year and a half behind their peers. Perhaps most concerningly, the CSJ reveals that in six out of ten mainstream schools, results for disadvantaged pupils are now worse than they were before the pandemic – even as results for their better-off peers improve. So, what to do about it? One way we try to tackle these persistent inequalities is by investing in the education of disadvantaged pupils, recognising that the time children spend in the classroom has the potential to be the most transformational years of their lives. We spend huge amounts doing so: almost £30 billion has been spent on the Pupil Premium, a pot of funding which largely follows children who are eligible for free school meals, or who have been at any point in the past six years. Yet the evidence increasingly suggests the system is not generating the hoped-for returns. At a time when public finances are so tight, it is important that we ensure the money we spend is delivering on its intended aims. Such stark statistics show the Pupil Premium is failing to do that, and we should be prepared to conduct a root-and-branch overhaul to ensure funding reaches the right schools. This is not about scrapping the entire system or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A series of targeted, sensible reforms could return the Pupil Premium to something more effective. A good place to start would be replacing the crude, binary eligibility test – where funding is triggered simply because a child received free school meals at any point in the past six years – with a more nuanced model that captures the full picture of cumulative deprivation. That means drawing on a broader range of indicators: welfare data, pupil attainment records and measures of geographical disadvantage should all be part of the equation. Doing this would also allow us to differentiate between persistent and temporary hardship by accounting for how deprivation changes over time. It is astonishing that our current system could award the Pupil Premium to a child living in a household earning £80,000 because their parents' income was once below £7,400 at some point in the last six years, while leaving a child growing up in a household with a consistent income of £10,000 with nothing. A fairer model would assign funding according to the extent and depth of disadvantage a child faces, rather than remaining statically tied to one point in their lives. Politicians could also show a bit more creativity in targeting money at the problems disadvantaged children face today. An additional 100,000 children are now severely absent – meaning they miss 50 per cent or more of possible sessions, making them absent more often than present – since the pandemic. Tying Pupil Premium funding to reductions in absence could realign incentives and give schools more reason to ensure children attend. It would be good for the children too – not least because they cannot catch up if they do not show up. Fixing this system will not be politically easy – particularly because the extra funding has become deeply woven into school budgets – but political difficulty is no excuse for inaction. If a policy has stopped working, it should change. Without reform, the government is set to spend another £10 billion on the Pupil Premium this Parliament and may well have little to show for it. Surely we owe it to the disadvantaged children across Britain to have another go?
Telegraph
12-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Young people want to work. Yet we are stopping them
In my industry, I meet countless young people full of energy and potential. Hospitality has always offered opportunities for those who are ambitious, practical and determined to get ahead – particularly those spurning university to get straight into the jobs market. But more and more, I hear the same frustration from employers: it's getting harder to bring young people into the workforce and keep them there. This isn't because young people don't want to work. It's because we've created an environment that makes it incredibly difficult for them to start. Nearly one million young people are now not in education, employment or training (NEETs). This is an economic disaster, but it is also a profound waste of human potential. Above all, it is a failure in policy. Because while the Government talks a good game on growth, the reality is it is building an environment at odds with young people's natural desire to get on and succeed. Take the benefit system. I was shocked to read in new research from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) that by 2026, someone out of work due to anxiety, receiving both Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment, will receive more than £25,000 a year. A full-time worker on the national living wage, meanwhile, will take home only around £22,500 after tax. This is not a criticism of those receiving support. The fault lies ultimately with a benefits system that, however well-intentioned, now too often rewards economic inactivity and traps people in dependency. It can't be right that some interviews with potential claimants are now done online and over Zoom. We must not forget that the ultimate goal of welfare should be to provide hand up not a handout. The problem is being compounded by short-sighted policies. Recent increases in National Insurance have raised costs for employers – especially in labour-intensive sectors like hospitality – and made it harder to create and sustain jobs. Hospitality has been hit hardest: since April, almost 70,000 jobs have been lost, reversing a gain of 18,000 last year. Add to that talk of more tax rises, and we risk sending a clear message to young people: effort doesn't pay, and enterprise isn't welcome. We've been here before. In the 1970s, Britain learnt the hard way that punishing work and subsidising idleness leads to stagnation and decline. Today we face a similar moment. If we want a dynamic, outward-looking economy again, we need to restore the link between work and reward. That means rebalancing the benefits system. The CSJ's proposals to tighten eligibility for long-term sickness claims based on less severe mental health conditions, using the savings to reinvest in NHS therapy, would be positive step in the right direction. Another idea is to use the saving to bring in tax relief for employers taking on NEETs. What better way to ameliorate the effects of the NICs rise for businesses, solve our inactivity problem and help thousands more young people reap all the financial and mental health benefits a job? The scheme would more than pay for itself, the CSJ finds, in added value to the economy. We cannot allow young people to drift, unsupported, when they could be building careers, confidence, and lives of purpose. A modern economy should reward ambition, support those who fall on hard times, and help people into meaningful work. For Britain's young people, there is no time to lose.
