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Supporting or controlling? New Labour’s housing strategy for teenage parents

University of Oxford

Mary Shaw

University of Bristol, mary.shaw{at}bristol.ac.uk

Teenage pregnancy has been the subject of much attention in recent social policy, including a particular strategy for supported housing for teenage parents. The issue of support, both formal and from family, is central to this endeavour, and problematic. In this paper we unravel New Labour’s construction of teenage parents’ housing need as an issue of isolation from support. First we focus on family support, and argue that New Labour’s supported housing strategy ignores its fragile and individualized nature and thus puts it in jeopardy. We then disentangle the discourse of welfare dependency that underpins this strategy and show that its disregard for teenage parents’ need for independent housing and capacity for autonomous living says more about the wish to control those teenage parents that New Labour perceives most at risk of welfare dependency than it does about a genuine desire to support them. We conclude that a right to independent housing is key to a strategy that genuinely aims to support teenage parents.

Key Words: family support • New Labour • supported housing • teenage pregnancy

Critical Social Policy, Vol. 25, No. 3, 402-417 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0261018305054078


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