Once in a while we see, hear or read something that gives us a mini shock – just enough to cause unsettling ripples in our millpond of self-regard.

A few years ago I experienced such a moment while reading a book about a woman from an Orthodox Jewish family. A loud, proud, iconoclastic, lesbian rebel – and an embarrassment to her family. That was the entertaining bit. The bit that caused me to search for my soul was a sentence which said Orthodox Jews believe you shouldn’t talk about other people – ever.

It had such a moment-of-blindness effect because talking about other people – speculating about who they are, why they did what they did and what it all means – is as close as I get to being philosophical. All of which is a very long excuse for what I’m about to do next. Some would call it gossip…

Last weekend I was in a pub, waiting for the biggest piece of sticky toffee pudding known to man and discussing a friend of a friend who felt pursued by destiny. Bad things that had happened in one generation of her family were starting to happen in the next and she, who thought she’d managed to escape the family curse, felt it coming for her.

Her story made me sit up and think about what the cycle of poverty and deprivation means on an individual and family level, and why it’s so hard for regeneration programmes to stop those wheels from turning.

Much closer to home I’ve seen people who never got started. But I’ve also seen how those who seem skilled, sorted and settled can so easily become lost. It’s as if they can continue down the path in front of them, putting one foot in front of the other and getting through the days, but become scared and bewildered when something happens to knock them off track. They no longer know who they are.

If the days of people having a job for life are gone forever, social policy needs to go beyond first-rung support for people who don’t know where to start to look at the skills, confidence and resilience of those who don’t know how to start again.

The interim review into child mental health published this week hints at the same problem, noting that children in England don’t appear to be developing as well emotionally as those elsewhere. The effects can be seen in the classroom, on the streets today, in relationships and in the workplace.

Emotional resilience should not be underrated by those charged with promoting economic development locally and nationally. The UK economy needs people who can get a foot on the ladder and steadily climb, but who also have the confidence to leap to another ladder when the one they’re on snaps: to live and live again.

Susan Downer, assistant editor
susan@newstartmag.co.uk