I worked for a while with a group of people who were trying to think of ways to tackle the whole problem of the cycle of poverty and poor expectation. There were several creative answers, but each of them meant that one group in society would consume all the available resources, to the disbenefit of others.
For example. There was one proposal which would target all resources on every new born child (starting with the pregnant mother). So a huge focus of multi-disciplinary input to assess the needs of every potential new born (irrespective of family income) and to target resources to meet whatever financial, educational, physical, health, emotional, mental health requirements were identified. This would mean that a child being born into a family with good skills and good support networks would require very little additional resource, while a child being born into a family where there there were few parenting skills, or where the mother had PND would receive the help they needed - even in families where parents were working or well educated (because after all the problems of poor budgeting or poor parenting, or poor mental health are not just the domain of the poor). For familes like those shown on the programme last night, the input of resources to the wider family (focussed around the needs of the child, and the aim of giving that child more equal life chances) would be enormous, and would include budgeting support, mental health support, extensive support for employment, community development, life skills etc.
The conclusion was that an approach like the one above would take a full generation to break the back of the poverty / inequalities cycle. It would involve actively directing all resources towards properly and collectively supporting and helping those familes most in need. It would take the belief of society as a whole that the problem we are facing is so huge that we need to work together for a generation to break it.
Unfortunately it would also mean that less resources would be available for all other groups. So a family with existing children would not be able to get a similar level of support, or even the level of support they get at the moment. Or support available for new medical treatments, or for care of the elderly, or policing would be reduced. And that is where is all becomes difficult. We might believe on a philosophical basis that an approach like this is best for society as a whole, but when it is MY child who is denied respite care, or MY parents who don't receive care, then I become less philosophical and more demanding of equality for my particular cause.
So we try to keep every group just a little bit happy, and the result is the current mess (and continuing mess-making) of unco-ordinated policies, money directed at single issues, and fragemented service provision. Those who can campaign for more resources, do. Those who have the wherewithal to budget well and parent well, create better opportunites for their children. While every day new babies are born into lives that are destined to reduce their chances and opportunites.
I don't want that to keep on happening, but am I really willing to reduce my short term expectations and demands, to take the risk that the poverty and inequality cycle can be broken in the long term? I don't know, but I'd rather do that than pay more tax into the current broken, ineffective systems.