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Ratio TalksExploring Social Relational Policy Author: Ratio
Ratio Talks is a podcast focusing on relationships, health and public policy. Past series covered community power and coping with the pandemic. The current series is focused on the potential for a relational social policy. It is hosted by Michael Little, a co-founder of Ratio. thisisratio.substack.com Language: en Genres: Science, Social Sciences, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Mike Wilson on settlements
Wednesday, 8 January, 2025
Mike Wilson is the Chief Executive of Pembroke House Settlement in Walworth, South London. That single line alone demands lots of explainers.Pembroke House was established as a mission by the students of Pembroke College at Cambridge University in the 1880s. The students built the mission -it looks like church- and gave their time to live and work in the community.Walworth is a neighbourhood of about 40,000 people in the London Borough of Southwark. It features in Dickens Great Expectations, an indication of its economic disadvantage, also reflected, as Mike remarks, in the maps of poverty drawn by Charles Booth at around the time that Pembroke House was built.Despite being a mission, Pembroke House functioned more like a settlement, more secular and more orientated to social reforming. Mike explains the difference, and the transition in the podcast.What does all this history have to do with contemporary challenges of by now gentrifying Walworth, never mind the future of public policy? That is Mike’s expertise, and the subject of the conversation we had in the turret of the settlement building last year.When talking about his experience as central government policy maker, Mike picks up similar themes around the Troubled Families model explored by Gavin Jones and Geoff Little on earlier editions the podcast.In his reflections, Pritpal S. Tamber refers to Jennie Popay’s work on de-radicalisation of community empowerment. In fact, in the article Power, control, communities and health inequalities I: theories, concepts and analytical frameworks published in Health Promotion International in 2021 (Vol 36, pages 1253 to 1263), Jennie and her colleagues use the word ‘depoliticisation’.Pritpal also referred to this publication from the Shelia McKechnie Foundation in which civil society leaders call for a new settlement between their sector, government and business.Pritpal referred to two articles dealing with what he describes as ‘deaths from despair’ First, Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century by Anne Case and Angus Deaton published in PNAS in 2015 (Vol 112 (49), pages 15078 to 15083). Second, They're not mentally ill, their lives are just s**t, a provocatively titled article by Timothy Price and colleagues in Health and Place, Volume 90, November 2024.Finally, Pritpal refers to Clare Wightman at Grapevine who has appeared in the podcast and Chris Dabbs at Unlimited Potential who has not appeared on the podcast, but hopefully will!Ratio Talks is available on Substack, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.Get in touch with us any time by messaging us on the SubstackRatio Talks is produced with the help of sound designer Nik Paget-Tomlinson. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisratio.substack.com
