Within Reach: The new politics of multiple needs and exclusions

Across the country there is a small group of people who face multiple problems such as homelessness, substance misuse, mental health problems and offending. They slip between the cracks of mainstream public services and they fall out of a political debate that is unrelentingly focused on majoritarian concerns.

As we approach 2015, politicians from all parties are beginning to define the ideas that will shape our public services for the future. But what does this thinking really mean for those facing multiple needs and exclusions?

In Within Reach: The new politics of multiple needs and exclusions, politicians and policy experts from across the political spectrum outline how our services need to change to provide the kind of support the most vulnerable in our society really need:

• Lisa Nandy MP, shadow minister for civil society, looks at how to invest in relationships
• Richard Reeves, associate director of CentreForum, says that independence, not inclusion, should be the goal of a liberal approach to disadvantage
• Christian Guy, director of the Centre for Social Justice, assesses the impact of the coalition on social justice
• Lord Michael Bichard, cross bench peer, asks why changing public services is so difficult
• Julia Unwin, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, takes a look at what the evidence tells us about the most excluded
• Simon Parker, director of the New Local Government Network, considers the potential power of localism
• Deborah Mattinson, director of BritainThinks, assesses public attitudes to the most vulnerable