•  
  •  
 

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-9769-6985

Abstract

This paper examines the erosion of concern for the social and relational in the United Kingdom through four decades of neoliberal policy, and argues for social pedagogy as a principled and urgently needed counterbalance. Drawing on a career spanning public, charitable, and academic practice primarily with children in and on the edges of care, it traces how the introduction of neoliberalism under Thatcher in the 1980s — and its institutionalisation through New Public Management in the 1990s — systematically dismantled the relational, ethical, and communal foundations of work with children. The consequences are documented in stark statistical terms: rising school exclusions and persistent absence, catastrophic educational outcomes for children in care, a decimated youth services sector, and a growing mental health crisis among the young. Against this backdrop, the paper introduces social pedagogy — a professional and academic discipline long established across continental Europe — as both a conceptual corrective and a practical framework. It explores how social pedagogy’s emphasis on ethics as first practice, its positive view of human nature, and its theoretically grounded approach to relationships, recognition, and coherence offer practitioners and policymakers what decades of proceduralism have failed to provide. The paper concludes by situating social pedagogy as an urgent political practice: a commitment to equality, human dignity, and the common good that the current moment demands.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Download

Share

COinS