By Ellie Harwood, Social Change Manager at Turn2us
The UK’s social security system is a vital part of our civic infrastructure. It’s as essential to a healthy, flourishing society as the NHS, our education system and our transport network. It is there to support us when life doesn’t work out as planned, helping us get back on our feet and smoothing out the peaks and troughs in income that naturally occur throughout our lives. It’s especially important when circumstances mean costs rise or we can’t make ends meet through wages alone – for example, when we have children, enter retirement, or become too sick to work. When it works well, it enables disabled people to live with dignity and participate as equal members of our society. It protects children from growing up in poverty. It helps ensure that a spell of bad luck doesn’t lead to inescapable poverty.
But the messages we routinely hear about our social security system rarely reflect the crucial role it plays in underpinning a just and inclusive society. Even those of us most invested in campaigning in support of the system can often spend much of our time talking about it in a negative way. We commit considerable resources to highlighting its shortcomings, telling the stories of where it goes wrong, and persuading others that the system is hostile and unhelpful – sometimes even giving the impression that it is broken beyond repair.
As policy researchers and charity campaigners, it can feel instinctive to highlight problems with the system in order to persuade policymakers to fix them. But what if this approach was actually doing more harm than good? What if the negative rhetoric around social security actually reduced public support for social security spending, hardened political attitudes, and increased stigma around the system and the people who need to use it?
At Turn2us, we believe that a strong social security system is the best way to prevent financial insecurity so everyone can thrive. We want to end stigma in the system and change the narrative around the system itself. It’s important to build public support and pride in the social security system to increase take-up and to help protect it from future spending cuts and the kind of reforms that risk increasing people’s financial insecurity. We have committed to doing our part to build this necessary public support by changing the way we talk about social security within our work.
We’re proud to be part of Together for Social Security, working with a coalition of communications specialists, academics and civil society organisations to share a new narrative that highlights the good that social security does, based on evidence of the messages that work to build public support.
Existing evidence already tells us that tactics like myth-busting and a heavy reliance on statistics aren’t the most effective approaches if we want to persuade people to care about poverty. The new research underpinning the Together for Social Security messaging guides reinforces this – and also gives us some evidence-based ways of talking about socio-economic injustice in a way that genuinely increases public support for the most effective solutions.
The coalition’s new messaging guide sets out the message frames that are proven to increase support for the social security system. At its heart, it’s about connecting with how people are feeling about the economy and giving them hope by linking to a vision of a better, fairer social security system – one that reduces inequalities and supports our society as a whole. When we use these messages, we can increase public support for both the system itself, and the people who rely on it.
Negative narratives about social security are sadly all too prevalent. If we want to end stigma and ensure everyone gets the support they need, we all need to play our part in strengthening our collective safety net. Shifting our messaging is a helpful place to start.
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