Satwat Rehman on Campaigning in Uncomfortable Spaces
A conversation about how we use the word resilience, what it means to campaign for change and not losing sight of justice.
Satwat Rehman is the Chief Executive of One Parent Families Scotland, the leading charity providing expert advice, practical support and campaigning with parents. I met her a couple of years ago and have been in awe of her work and voice in the national debate.
She has been a member of the Commission for Childcare Reform and the Scottish Government’s Social Renewal Advisory Board. She is currently a member of the Just Transition Commission and First Minister’s Advisory Council for Women and Girls. In this conversation I got to ask her a bit about how we can work towards meaningful change and challenge the many crisis the UK seems to be in.
You’ve worked in the public sector for over 30 years, what kinds of changes have you observed in that time?
I’ve worked in Scotland and England in that time. In terms of the positive changes; there’s greater recognition of the roles of NGOs and the Third Sector today. I think we, as a sector, are much more organised. The funding situation has always been cyclical. We lived through times when there’s been investment and times when there hasn’t. What’s not changed is the short-termism in funding. The tightness of the funding that doesn’t allow the wiggle room on how we respond.
One Parent Families is working on the ground with carers, which includes your helpline. You must come across a lot of stories that shed a light on how we’re doing as a society right now. What insights have you gained from this experience?
What’s striking about that real time information through our services, helpline, web chat and social media, is the fact that there’s a frustration amongst those who contact us. They feel like they’ve told their stories, they have raised the big issues. We did some work a few years ago on how we could support parents on low income work. One of the parents spoke about childcare and how frustrated she was at the number of times she’s been asked and there’s no feedback, the change hasn’t happened. We also see the severity and extremity of need through the cost of living crisis, the lockdowns and austerity. There’s no one thing, it’s cumulative. We have a channel on Slack called ‘Advice Single Parent Themes’ where the advice and information service workers will summarise the main themes that have come out during the week. So, if I just go through that now… I see things like: child contact, child maintenance, lots of calls about benefits, poverty and mental health, legal issues, cost of living, education options, allowances, employment and childcare, tax credits… It’s a range of things. But more and more we’re seeing the financial need and the mental health impact. The other thing that struck me is what we don’t do enough of; recognise, and value the enormous capacity for resilience and ingenuity in dealing with circumstances that families find themselves in.
“…we want equity now for the families we work with, but ultimately what we want is justice.”
I think sometimes there’s a paternalistic way people in the Third Sector talk about resilience, like ‘we need to give them resilience’. But often I find that’s the thing people already have…
It’s also worth noting there are some things we shouldn’t expect anyone to be resilient to… We shouldn’t be expecting people to become resilient to deep and persistent poverty. Though I think resilience is great as a word, everyone uses to mean slightly different things.
And while being resilient you can also fight for things to change, you don’t have to accept the world as it is.
Absolutely. As an organisation the way we would describe it is: we want equity now for the families we work with, but ultimately what we want is justice. We’ll deal with the here and now, absolutely, but then work with others to campaign for change so those experiences won’t exist in the first place.
You’re a member of the Just Transition Commission. Could you tell me about the ways that climate policy may intersect with the work of One Parent Families?
That is something we have spent a lot of time discussing with a view to ensuring that what we are transitioning to doesn’t bake-in the same structural issues that are causing the inequalities. We’re very conscious of not building new inequalities because we might have not spoken to people about their experiences. What that looks like will vary from community to community and in different areas, but certainly the initial report the commission published it’s the cost of living crisis, the austerity crisis, the extremity of experiences people are having and how we avoid that. I don’t think a just transition to net zero, tackling child poverty, improving outcomes for care experienced children and young people are exclusive to each other. It’s not about creating a hierarchy of issues, these are all emergencies. The climate crisis is on most people’s radar, but it doesn’t mean what we’re doing to ensure the just transition can’t also help reduce poverty.
Could you tell me about a time when your passion and commitment were reaffirmed and re-energised?
The Black Lives Matter movement. After the brutal murder of George Floyd there was a gathering in Edinburgh. Going there and hearing young Black people talk about their experiences, the passion, anger and their impatience (rightly so) felt like the rebirth of a movement.
What are the elements of a good campaign that aims at changing policy?
They’re always evidence based. We have one at the moment on the parent penalty - it’s addressing the fact that if you’re under 25 you receive a lower level of Universal Credit. That’s the same if you’re a young parent, they don’t recognise there might be an additional cost to parenting. What we’ve been campaigning for is based on the evidence of what we know, so what we’ve done is build an alliance with a number of organisations who are calling for the same thing. That will involve lots of work with politicians, briefings, social media, interviews… What we’re keen to see are simple, doable goals.
How does change happen?
Perseverance! Some changes are incremental and it’s only when you look back you can see the change that has been made. Engaging and speaking to people is critical. Going into spaces which are going to be a bit more uncomfortable. I went somewhere to talk about poverty and inequality and I remember someone putting their hand up in the audience, it turns out they were a local Conservative Party councillor. He spoke very passionately about what they had seen with one of the people in their area, a single mum, who felt so much shame and stigma going to a food pantry (it’s an affluent area). He spoke about going there with her and how we mustn't forget about poverty in affluent areas. I learned something from that. But then we got to have the discussion of ‘what needs to change’ and what he can do to change it. That stigma is a result of the policies that blame people which you see coming out of Westminster on a daily basis at the moment. So, some of it is about connecting with people and their experience.
If I died and left Everything Mixtape for you in my inheritance, who would you interview next?
You know what, someone I always want to have a really good conversation with is Angela Davis. Or George Jackson if he was still alive. They helped me understand, through their writing, inequalities I had experienced. What I found so inspiring with the Panther Movement is that they were recognising that change doesn’t happen in the abstract. They did all the practical stuff, the breakfast clubs, the classes, the community development stuff as well as the campaigning.
The Black Panther movement is so interesting, the way they put education and community first…
And I suppose on a very small and humble scale compared to them, that’s what we’re doing with One Parent Families - a community first approach. But it doesn’t mean we just stay in the sphere of meeting a need without engaging with what caused the need in the first place.
What’s been keeping you inspired lately?
This is very much of the moment, but some of what I saw at the Fringe I found very inspiring and devastating. I saw a fantastic one woman play: Incidents in the Life of an Anglican Slave. The person who was performing it brought it right up to the modern day and referenced the Windrush generation in it… the legacy and impact of colonialism. I also saw TONES: A Hip Hop Opera, it raises some really critical issues we need to address.
