Learning around the world - England

Full employment is often seen as a positive. And unemployment for whatever reason as a negative. That might be true if you're measuring tax revenues -- but not if you are measuring the sustainable functioning of a neighborhood.

I remember living in a suburban neighborhood where I was the only at home adult during the daytime in a three block radius. The children came home after school to empty houses and yet, everyone was proud that they were employed ... and they looked down on me for being "just a housewife". Are those days still here, just different?

England's policy of Full-Employment is taken to task as destructive to sustainable community.

This is work that keeps local neighbourhoods safe, clean and inviting, keeps people healthy and happy and enhances people's abilities as parents, friends, neighbours, and potential employees - but never appears in government employment statistics.

The report's authors conclude that when public services or charities regard their clients as assets - and engage them to work alongside them in the community - it can have a dramatic effect on their health, self-esteem and social networks. They warn that policy-makers discount the vital work that many people are doing in their own neighbourhoods, binding communities together, helping local young people, caring or preventing crime and social breakdown.

They ignore it because it is done by public service or welfare clients, and because the work isn't paid. As a result, government emphasis on 'full employment' means that they will often be prevented from carrying on this vital work because they are forced instead into inflexible, low paid work.

"The government urgently needs to recognise that not all vital work is paid, and that they threaten to strip-mine neighbourhoods - leading to worse health, higher crime and higher public spending - unless they recognise the value of this hidden work, and the potential value of the people doing it," says report's lead author and nef associate, David Boyle.

When these human assets are valued they can be empowered in creative ways such as:

- Time banks (cooperatives, bartering clubs, etc)
- Nonprofits and government programs can focus not on "helping" but on "enabling resident abiities"
- Recognition of informal community leaders and contributios with resources, training and access to decisionmaking