Dear Wendy,

Thanks for posting this statement and for providing some of the context of its generation.

I was in the group which discussed this at York and also - as you say - you and I did have a brief post conference discussion by email about some reflections upon issues arising for each of us out of the conference and as part of that we pondered how to give the statement more persuasive force than just sending it to the psychologist as a readers' letter.  Even so I want to start the ball rolling with some comment:.

As far as the content is concerned I think it has lots of good features: it says something important and is pretty succinct, relatively accessible etc. but I have 2 main reservations at this stage.

1. The discussion and the drafting of the statement came before Richard Wilkinson's presentation to the conference. The statement talks about ending "poverty and social inequalities"  There are many manifestations of social inequality of course but in connection with this poverty statement, I wonder if we might now want to be more specific about the destructive consequences of societal income inequality, independent of absolute wealth (richer societies with more unequal distributions of income appear more destructive than poorer societies with more equal distribution)?

2. Bearing in mind the powerful (to my mind) critiques of Ian Parker and others that mainstream psychology is the servant of capitalism, perhaps rather than the 'skills and knowledge  of psychology' (as it is) being deployed to prevent or intervene in relation to poverty we would want to call for the transformation of psychology to make it capable of being part of the solution rather than problem?

Hello all,

Apologies for the delay in sending this, and also for any cross postings.

I agreed to send this email after a 'workshop to follow the Birmingham meeting on Globalisation Themes', in the recent Community Psychology Conference in York. Those who attended the workshop considered how to take forward the statements that were generated at the meeting in Birmingham. After a fair bit of discussion, the majority of the group at York voted to generate a new statement on poverty, which was as follows:

We believe that psychologists have a fundamental responsibility to join with others to end poverty and social inequalities. We call for positive social, personal, economic and political action to end the causes of poverty. Psychology has at times tended to hide the systemic causes and effects of poverty, seeing it as a characteristic of the individual. Instead we call for the skills and knowledge of psychology to be used in exposing the causes and effects of poverty, and supporting effective action to prevent it.

At the end of the conference, we agreed that this email would be circulated to the Community Psychology discussion list, the list of people who attended the Birmingham meeting, and the list of people who attended the York Conference. We agreed to ask for comments by 'a certain date', but we didn't decide on a date, so I'm suggesting a month from today: 25 October 2007. We also agreed that at this point we would ask for vounteers who are interested in taking this forward, in terms of producing a pamphlet, or other suggestions of what to do now with the statements we have generated.

We also agreed that I would write a brief letter for the Psychologist, from the conference (rather than from me personally) to bring the statement on poverty from the Community Psychology Network to wider attention within the world of psychology. I've briefly discussed with David Fryer, and will be getting in touch with the editor of the BPS to discuss whether this would be best placed within a letter, longer conference report, or coloured panel within the magazine, so will let you know how it goes.

Please do get in touch if you'd be interested in taking the statements further, and I can pull together a list of names and email addresses and send out an email to all who have expressed an interest by the 25 October.

Best wishes,

Wendy

Please note: there were some care/of email addresses on the conference list:

[log in to unmask], please forward to Oz Osbourne

Jenny Brock,  please forward to: Imran Akram, Mar Appleby, Richard Ashton, Janet Gill, Claire Russell, Norma Shepherd & Alison Wilcock.

Thanks.