A (but by no means 'the') trauma-conscious response to the new government's manifesto

So - the nation has very decisively spoken. Whether most people were voting out of conviction, or fear of the alternatives, Labour has an opportunity to switch things up after 14 years of Conservative power.

Change can be frightening for trauma survivors, if we have found an equilibrium that at least keeps us mostly feeling stable day to day. But by our observations, barely any of us has been feeling that for a while. In any other situation, change is exactly what our survival instincts are screaming for. We have seen some huge relief at the result in the community, but also quite a lot of reservation. How much can be done at a time of such collapse?

We are not equipped to do a budgeted, legally thorough assessment of what Labour is saying, and are not attempting to do so here. But, acknowledging how little attention is given to the needs of trauma survivors in most political movements and how hard it can be to translate policy into human impact, we have gone through the Labour manifesto to identify what they say they are aiming for, consider its possible resonances with those experiencing or at risk of trauma, and the potential impacts on us.

This is a trauma-conscious perspective - not the trauma-conscious perspective. There will be things we have neglected to mention, and things we speak to more thoroughly than others based on our biases through the survivors we have met and the subjects we have explored most. But we hope it will present a new way of receiving the information we have been given, and one that helps you to process your own thoughts and feelings, whether you identify with our responses or not.

"MISSION-DRIVEN GOVERNMENT"

Labour’s manifesto starts out by describing its intention to be a “mission-driven government”: this acknowledges the weakness of governments in which different parts work separately on narrow goals, and instead promises one that works together on “ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives” in partnership with “business, trade unions, civil society, faith groups, and communities.”

We have observed that the lack of joined-up thinking and connection to human impact in the design of systems that trauma survivors often encounter, is one of the greatest exacerbating factors in our long-term experience of post-traumatic stress and multiple disadvantage. The concept of a government that listens, connects the dots, and takes a holistic approach to finding solutions, is very welcome.

CRACKDOWN ON CORRUPTION AND COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY

We are encouraged by Labour’s commitment to “end the link between access to ministers and an inside track for public contracts” and its “renewed focus on tax avoidance by large businesses and the wealthy” - not simply because actioning these will increase funds and efficiency for services helping those who need them, but because the very act of naming these as the greatest sources of fraudulence affecting our economy changes the recent narratives that have demonised people on benefits or receiving other state support. We hope this will mark a lasting cultural change that fosters better conditions for post-traumatic growth for our most vulnerable people.

The indication that voting will be made easier, and the promise of the vote for 16 and 17 year olds, is another indication that this government wants to listen to those who have no golden tickets, and redress the balance so that those whose lives will be most affected by their actions are not barred from having a say.

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE COST OF LIVING

The climate crisis is destroying homes and habitats, taking lives and creating unbearable living and working conditions around the world: its relevance to trauma is undeniable. We are pleased that Labour wants us to be using clean, zero-carbon power by 2030 and will watch the journey to that goal with interest. The intention of creating nine new National River Walks and three new National Forests in England as part of its plan to expand nature-rich habitats and improve public access to nature, could also bring the healing power of the natural world closer to many survivors.

Recent discourse has implied that environmental sustainability and cost-efficiency are mutually exclusive - so we are interested in Labour’s plan to put energy under a publicly-owned company, Great British Energy, to lower bills even while providing clean energy, and the Warm Homes Plan to upgrade homes for energy efficiency.

WORKERS' RIGHTS

Self-employment can be the best option for survivors, due to the flexibility it allows to determine your own workload, and make changes according to unpredictable states of health. The promise to take action on late payments for small businesses and the self-employed hopefully points to a government that will support those who want and need to work on their own terms, to do so without fear of unfair treatment.

There are also promises to improve public workers’ living standards in response to the recruitment and retention crises facing public services currently - which if achieved, includes many of those responsible for supporting our most vulnerable people, and as such at risk of vicarious trauma at work.

The creation of a Single Enforcement Body to ensure employment rights are upheld, change of the remit of the independent Low Pay Commission to make the minimum wage account for the cost of living, and the removal of discriminatory age bands so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage, are also promising ideas for making sure workplaces do not have licence to be exploitative and systemically traumatising.

We are interested to see how the assurance of “strengthening rights to equal pay and protections from maternity and menopause discrimination and sexual harassment” for women will be brought about. Encouraged by the introduction of disability and ethnicity pay gap reporting for large employers alongside gender pay gap reporting, we are watching eagerly to see how the acknowledged rights of disabled and global majority people to equal pay will be enacted.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Disability rights

We are pleased by the acknowledgement that the Work Capability Assessment is not working, and that it is unreasonable for people to be subjected to immediate benefit reassessments as soon as they start work. Getting back into work after long-term ill health, or with a disability, can give people the sense of purpose and community that they need to build happier lives. But it has long been a risk that many cannot afford to take because of this immediate benefit cut-off, leaving people with nothing if they cannot manage the job after all. This acknowledgment from Labour could see people who want to do what they can, be trusted to take that at the pace their health allows.

LGBTQIA+ rights

Though we wish it went without saying, we are glad that Labour feels able to say unequivocally that conversion therapy is abuse and will treat it as such. An update to the gender recognition law is also long overdue, and we hope that simplifying it will indeed reduce the indignities faced by trans people, and the time and energy it will take for them to be acknowledged as who they know themselves to be.

We acknowledge that the continued need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria leaves trans people at the mercy of the efficiency, expertise and open-mindedness of their healthcare services; we want to see this government continuing to seek to understand the issues around trans rights better and support a still learning public to do so too, with the measure that is often missing from popular public debate, so that it can be confident of legislating in the best interests of all people from a place of compassion and respect.

In particular, we hope that while acting on learnings from the recent thorough Cass Review about clinical support for young people seeking NHS help around their gender identity, they will also remain conscious of the limitations and exclusions that have been noticed and criticised in the evidence gathering of this review, keep listening to experts by experience, and explore how best to exercise compassion and care in a matter where some needs will inevitably not be met in the optimum way whatever action is taken.

Hate crime

Making all existing strands of hate crime an aggravated offence and bringing back stronger monitoring of anti-semitic and Islamophobic hate could be a valuable deterrent from attacks - though we hope to see Labour going lengths to change people’s minds by tackling causes of prejudices that lead to hate crimes, rather than simply frightening people out of acting on those prejudices. Noting assertions of higher numbers of police and more powers given to the police, we trust that the displays of prejudiced behaviour and abuses of power that have been uncovered in some corners of the police force will be taken seriously and acted upon, so that those meting out justice will be displaying the attitudes and responsibility they want the British public to take. The assurance of “stronger training on racism” for police sounds like a light brush approach to the profound need that is evident, but we will see.

Faith rights

Labour seems more apt than many to recognise religion as a protected characteristic, and to note the need to work with faith groups in delivering many of its objectives. Though this is only alluded to briefly in the manifesto, Starmer’s letter to faith leaders during the election campaign stated a promise to appoint a government minister to lead on engagement with faith communities, to facilitate partnerships between local authorities and faith groups in communities, and to use their network of parliamentary faith champions to enhance their engagement with faith communities. The letter ended with the reassurance that “a Labour government would be committed to building a Britain where all faith communities are safe and where diversity is celebrated”. We wonder if this might lead to a different approach to faith representation in Parliament and especially the House of Lords, where currently 26 places are kept for Church of England bishops and archbishops as “lords spiritual” but none are protected for leaders of any other faiths?

Survivor rights?

We would also hugely welcome acknowledgement of a wider scope of experiences in diversity and equality measures, and especially to recognise survivors of abuse as disadvantaged and marginalised. In particular, survivors of child sexual abuse have been arguing this case, given the developmental problems it can cause as well as the ongoing trauma carried through to adult life. With the movement to introduce mandatory reporting for child sexual abuse suffering due to the pre-election legislation rush, the time is ripe for Labour to pick this back up and run with it. It could make a huge difference to survivors’ opportunities to contribute their knowledge and expertise to society more widely, as well as being a gesture that shows survivors they are valued and respected members of our society.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Concerns for those experiencing homelessness

The language used in the manifesto when referring to people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law is not always as considered as it could be, and new enforcement powers such as Respect Orders to ban “persistent adult offenders” from town centres lead us to ask: persistent in what offence? Since the highlighted “issues” addressed by these are public drinking and drug use, we can see these disproportionately and unfairly targeting some people experiencing homelessness, in ways that uncomfortably echo the truly horrendous centralised attacks on homeless communities in recent years.

Concerns for at-risk young people - but possible mitigation?

Similarly, the harsher consequences for young people found in possession of a knife could display concerning lack of consideration of the levels of fear in which many young people live today. The Young Futures programme they promise will reach every community with youth workers, mental health support workers and careers advisers, as well as youth workers and mentors in A&Es and Pupil Referral Units, could mitigate the risk of young people having no-one to rely on but themselves. This will of course take time to roll out, and longer for young people to feel able to trust the support is really there. We hope that this consideration for the needs of young people before they are found in possession of a knife, will extend to those who have already been found in possession, and that possession will not be taken as a marker that punishment is the only remaining option for a frightened young person.

The introduction of a new offence of criminal exploitation of children is another crucial move towards addressing the causes of knife crime in young people, rather than straightforwardly condemning young people themselves.

Quicker processing of legal cases

Promising to get legal cases processed more quickly would reduce trauma and unsafety both for those accusing and those accused, prevent perversions of justice through evidence going missing or time limits being exceeded, and help to reduce the guilt that so often prevents victims from speaking out - knowing that doing so will entangle people they care about in long-term stress and upset.

Violence against women and girls

We are delighted by the detail dedicated to tackling violence against women and girls, including assurances of specialist rape and sexual offences teams in every police force, fast-tracking rape cases, domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms, strengthening the rights and protections available to women in co-habiting couples and whistleblowers in the workplace - as well as the recognition that misogyny is a root cause of such violence. (Dare we hope, from their promise to “ensure police forces have the powers they need to track and tackle the problem”, that finally under this government, misogyny might be recognised legally as a hate crime…?)

Support for offenders

We worried a little when the first mention of prisons was about the need to build more of them - but appreciate the focus on the severe impacts of overcrowding on prisoners and wanting to create environments in which people can rehabilitate, rather than simply wanting to get people out of the way. The manifesto goes on to recognise the need to address the impossible situation many prisoners face when being released with no home or job to go to, and displays consideration of the fact that offences do not take place in a vacuum.

If this can be sustained, we would expect to see the criminal justice system helping people to rebuild and grow, rather than putting a permanent mark of distrust and contempt on them. This is important for victims as well as for perpetrators, as many victims who report are as motivated by the desire to see the perpetrator receive the help they need to change, as by desires for their own justice or to protect others - especially, as is often the case, if they know the perpetrator. It is so much easier to move on when lessons have been learned, and all too easy to accuse victims of cold-blooded revenge when punishment is the primary outcome of criminal justice systems.

Historical injustice

Pleasing also to see acknowledgment of the historical and generational trauma carried by survivors and families of injustices such as the infected blood scandal and Windrush scandal, in compensation schemes. We know how lengthy the delays often are between promises of compensation and anything tangibly happening, and hope survivors will not be left in limbo for too long - as again, compensation is often the start of a new chapter of healing, not the finish line.

HOUSING

Labour has promised to abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions “immediately”: this is so vital to protecting the security and wellbeing of renters who currently have so few rights. It would be interesting to know what their assurance of empowering renters to “challenge unreasonable rent increases” would look like in practice, this being another source of constant anxiety for renters currently.

Extending Awaab’s Law - which requires landlords to investigate and fix reported health hazards within specified timeframes, named after Awaab Ishak who tragically died aged 2 as a direct result of exposure to mould in social housing - to the private sector, is a natural progression to make sure that we all know our homes are not actively damaging our health or those of our families. We note however, that the law is currently proving hard to implement: many housing associations now overwhelmed with the works needed on existing properties are currently unable to purchase new builds, leaving them unoccupied while our streets get fuller and fuller. Some things clearly cannot happen immediately - and will require difficult decisions about priorities and schedules.

Indeed, the amount of work now taking place rapidly to improve existing housing thanks to Awaab's Law, has made clear just how much work needs to be done on the homes we already have. Given that there are currently 270,000 abandoned properties in the UK, we wonder if reconditioning these could more efficiently create safe places for people to live - and, for those who have been without a home, begin their post-traumatic growth. Since coming into power, Labour has announced that it is putting building of its promised 1.5 million new homes entirely into the for-profit private sector’s control, which leads to doubt about how many of these will be council housing or other affordable housing, and thereby how much difference it will make to homelessness.

ASYLUM SEEKING AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

Those affected by war or other unsafety in their native countries are experiencing some of the most obvious traumas in our society right now. Like anyone experiencing trauma, they need safety and security before they can even begin the journey of healing, and the longer they have to wait for it, the longer and harder that journey will be. Starmer confirmed that he would be scrapping the Rwanda Bill on day one of his premiership, and one of his first international phone calls as Prime Minister was to Benjamin Netanyahu pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza - so the rights of these survivors are clearly high on his agenda.

In the longer term, though, we are unclear of the plan. The manifesto expresses clear intentions of ending the small boats crisis, mostly through prosecuting smuggling gangs, but the approach to helping asylum seekers who do arrive feels underdeveloped. There seems to be strong reliance on being able to fast-track removals to safe countries, or negotiate more return agreements with other countries. Can we really be so sure of other safe countries being prepared to take more asylum seekers? As for return agreements - how can we do this without enforcing on people who have risked their lives to escape a situation, our own definitions and perceptions of what is “safe”? While acknowledging that nothing is easy about the situation, we would like to understand better how asylum seekers who inevitably find themselves with us for indefinite periods of time will be respected and supported.

SCHOOLS

Recognising different types of success

For children experiencing difficult home situations, school should be a place of safety and possibility. For any child, it should be a place of self-discovery and opportunity, whatever you discover your strengths and ambitions to be. We are glad to see Labour seeking to enhance the inspection regime so that things like safeguarding and attendance are assessed on more of a par with academic attainment, and a report card giving a fuller picture will replace single headline grades. Alongside their promises to deliver a broad curriculum developing speaking and creative skills as well as literacy, numeracy and technological skills, and to have specialist mental health professionals in every school, we hope this points to an acknowledgment that successful schools are about more than exam results, and young people will be prepared to support themselves through life’s array of challenges through their time there.

Support for teachers

We are also conscious of the weight of responsibility that has fallen solely on dwindling numbers of teachers for the wellbeing as well as education of pupils, so hope these new mental health specialist roles, as well as the promised extra 6500 teacher positions, will make schools easier places to work - and that the new assessments for schools will create more holistic, constructive reflections on how schools are doing than the model that has been so traumatic for school staff recently.

Helping families in poverty

The manifesto displays sensitivity to some of the most isolating factors of school life for children living in poverty. By offering free breakfast clubs to all school kids, families using them are not automatically exposing themselves as in need. By limiting the number of branded items of uniform schools can require, fewer children will stick out by having to have exceptions made. These things shouldn’t be sources of shame in the first place, of course, but we are glad of the acknowledgement and action considering that is the situation in which we find ourselves.

Helping children with specific needs

Improving inclusivity through expertise of special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools will reduce unnecessary segregation of children with different neurological styles, and possibly foster greater appreciation of the talents to be found in neurodiversity - while improving provision in specialist schools at the same time will make sure that those with the most complex needs are given the support they need to thrive.

Higher education

It is positive to see Labour acknowledging the need to invest in apprenticeships, and apparent valuing of skills beyond academia that is so absent in many educational environments. The wording of their support for people who “meet the requirements” and want to go to university reads slightly uncomfortably like a value judgement of a degree as innately ‘better’ than an apprenticeship, but we hope we’re splitting hairs here, and the overall strategy will see young people valued to the full for whatever they have to bring, and valuing each other accordingly.

THE ARTS

Of course, we are relieved by the promise to support young people to study creative subjects up to the age of 16 after the disdain thrown on arts education in recent years. We are concerned that this acknowledgment of the value of the arts in supporting people to express themselves and make sense of the world around them, does not extend into promising more money towards the arts as a whole.

Currently, the arts budget for the whole of the UK is less than that for Berlin alone, and the proportion of our government budget spent on the arts (0.4%) is less than half of the European average (1%). Subsidy is crucial to the creation of art that gives us safe spaces to explore the kinds of ideas and emotions that are otherwise so difficult to make space for in our day-to-day lives, yet are fundamental to developing and maintaining our resilience, purpose and empathy. Our need for them has no age limit. A society that comes through trauma well is a society that invests in the arts.

Labour does not mention the value of the arts and arts activities in health and social care at all - in fact, of the major parties, the Liberal Democrat manifesto was the only one that did. Let’s see what we can do to get that more on the agenda.

HEALTHCARE AND SOCIAL CARE

We look forward to seeing how Labour lives up to the promise to “reform the NHS to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health”. The distinction between the two has always baffled us. Is the brain not part of the body? Does what happens in the brain instruct and determine everything that happens in the body?

It is also a joy to see their acknowledgement that joint working between health and social care is essential, so many of us having been lost in systemic games of piggy in the middle between the two. A national care service offering uniformity of standards everywhere sounds too good to be true, as a national health service undoubtedly did at first; and, like the NHS, is bound to experience severe knocks over time. It is hard to imagine how the variety of circumstances across the UK and across different social needs could be measured and accounted for under one body, and it will certainly have to work in partnership with the kind of grassroots organisations that thrive on embodied understanding of their own specific communities. But, done with commitment, attention to detail, constant evaluation and most importantly the voices of those in need of it at its heart, it could bring about the kind of change we desperately need to see.

And possibly the most significant promise for trauma survivors: to put agency into the hands of patients. We have found ourselves without control and access to information in so many contexts, with shattering consequences; having that replicated in our healthcare treatment can be too much to bear, and leave us suffering in silence rather than seeking help when something isn't right. Reforming the Mental Health Act to address the horrendous treatment of neurodivergent and Black people, who are disproportionately detained under it, is hopefully the start of a journey to recognising that many displays of distress often perceived as mental health problems are in fact very healthy responses to very real threats - and fixing the problems where they really are.

THE INTERNET

Just about the vaguest assurance in the manifesto is around keeping people safe online, in particular referencing how misogynistic content is driving violence against women. Especially since Covid, we all spend far more time in front of a screen than we used to, and it is palpable just how much more cruel we are capable of being when we can't see or hear the people we are addressing. Figuring out how to balance the empowering benefits of freedom of speech and expression online, with consciousness of the human impact, is huge for preventing trauma in the modern world. So we are glad this is on the agenda, even if we have very little sense of what it looks like yet.

IN CONCLUSION...

While falling short in a few key areas, Labour is saying a lot of the right things - and saying most of them in ways that suggest a more embodied empathy with the traumas people are experiencing in our current national context than we have experienced from governments recently. Many of the promises are very, very big, and will require time and consistency if they are truly to be successful.

Many people are vulnerable to retraumatisation through unfulfilled promises, so it feels irresponsible to put our party hats on just yet. But what we can hold onto is some strongly worded intentions (on which we can quote them to push for action if we find it lacking), some clear areas where we need to push the agenda, and a cautious confidence that we have a government that seems to be open to listening.

Have we missed something you really care about? Please feel free to leave comments below, if so! Let’s all look out for each other, now the time is ripe for learning and influencing.