Op Note: CSJ ROADSHOW IN MANCHESTER: HOW TO MEND BROKEN BRITAIN

The Centre for Social Justice 9 Westminster Palace Gardens Artillery Row London SW1P 1RL Telephone 020 7340 9650 Website www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk Release date: Tuesday 16th March 2010 OPERATIONAL NOTE – FOR THE ATTENTION OF NEWS EDITORS AND PICTURE DESKS NOT FOR PUBLICATION

Think Tank run by former Leader of the Conservative Party Iain Duncan Smith to meet with 60 voluntary sector groups in Bristol The Centre for Social Justice will be in Manchester on Thursday 25 March for an event designed to boost the morale of local voluntary sector groups in their efforts to mend Broken Britain. The CSJ team will join a panel of 3 local voluntary sector experts highly successful in tackling drug addiction, youth crime and anti-social behaviour. Presentations will describe the depth of poverty in the UK today and how small voluntary sector groups are crucial if we are to mend Broken Britain. Invited guests include voluntary sector groups, councillors, Parliamentary Candidates and students. The CSJ has developed over 700 policies aimed at reversing social breakdown and helping Britain’s hardest hit communities. Over 2,000 voluntary sector groups have provided evidence which has shaped these policies, many adopted by both the Government and the Conservative Party. Date: Thursday 25 March 2010 Venue: King’s House, Sidney Street, Manchester, M1 7HB Time: 12 noon – 2.25pm Charlotte Pickles, CSJ Policy Director; Gavin Poole, CSJ Strategy Director; Dr Samantha Callan, CSJ Chairman-in-Residence are available for interviews on Thursday morning from 11am. For media inquiries, please contact Nick Wood of Media Intelligence Partners Ltd on 07889 617003 or 0203 008 8146 or Alistair Thompson on 07970 162225 or 0203 008 8145. NOTES TO EDITORS • The Centre for Social Justice is an independent think tank established, by Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP in 2004, to seek effective solutions to the poverty that blights parts of Britain. • The CSJ are visiting a number of cities throughout March and April including: Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds. • In July 2007 the group published Breakthrough Britain. Ending the Costs of Social Breakdown. The paper provided practical policy solutions for tackling family breakdown, addiction, educational failure, welfare dependency, personal debt and described a new role for the voluntary sector in their remedy. • Subsequent reports have put forward proposals for reform of the police, prisons, benefits reform, social housing, the asylum system and family law. Other reports have dealt with street gangs and early intervention to help families with young children. The panellists from the voluntary sector groups at the CSJ Bristol event are: Anna Thompson, The Message Trust Anna Thompson is the Eden Network National Development Co-ordinator for the Message Trust, an award-winning Christian charity working to improve the lives of young people in Manchester, UK. Working in schools, local communities and prisons, the Message are in contact with around 100,000 young people across Greater Manchester each year. Over 15 years they have helped the hardest-to-reach young people, with the aim of bringing hope, providing opportunities and releasing potential. www.message.org.uk Dave Smith, Boaz Trust Dave is the founder and director of the Boaz Trust, which he established in 2004, to relieve the suffering of destitute asylum seekers in Greater Manchester: a problem he witnessed growing during his work with a local homelessness charity. Alongside managing the Boaz Trust and hands-on work with clients, Dave is involved in raising awareness on a local and national level for destitute asylum seekers in Greater Manchester and beyond through the Trust and NACCOM, a network of similar organisations across the country providing accommodation to destitute asylum seekers. Dave was a consultee for the CSJ Asylum Working Group and provided evidence for its report Asylum Matters. http://boaztrust.org.uk/ Peter Green, The Barnabus Trust Peter Green is the founder of The Barnabus Trust which first came onto the streets of Manchester in August 1991. In the early years Peter Green would sit in Piccadilly Gardens with a bag of sandwiches and a thermos flask waiting for the homeless and hungry to pay him a visit. From those very humble beginnings and with the support of local churches Barnabus has grown to reach more and more homeless people. The group work with street homeless, those with drug and alcohol related problems, prostitutes and female prisoners as they prepare for their release. Iain Duncan Smith visited the project in November 2007. www.barnabus-manchester.org.uk