Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. In our society, a wealthy
minority flourish, while around one-fifth experience chronic poverty and
many people on middle incomes fear for their futures. Social policy has
failed to find answers to these problems and there is now a demand for a
new narrative to enable us to escape from the crisis in our society.
With the aim of ending poverty, this book argues that we need to start
with the society we want, rather than framing poverty as a problem to be
solved. It calls for a bold forward-looking social policy that addresses
continuing austerity, under-resourced organisations and a lack of social
solidarity. Based on a research programme carried out by the Webb
Memorial Trust involving leading organisations, academics, community
activists, children, and surveys of more than 12,000 people living in
poverty, a key theme is power which shows that the way forward is to
increase people's sense of agency in building the society that they
want.