Welfare reform and public sector cuts are adding significant pressure to a system already buckling under the strain of growing demand and underfunding. This is leading to unsustainable human, social and economic costs.
For the past 18 months the new economics foundation (nef) has been working with people in some of the most deprived communities in Birmingham and Haringey to explore their experiences of the government’s austerity measures and its ambitions for building a ‘Big Society’.