In addition, there is a more utilitarian case to be made, once one counts the sheer financial and economic excess costs of SMD in terms of healthcare, crime and justice, benefits, and so forth; costs which were documented more selectively in this study but on a more comprehensive basis in the original Hard Edges study in England (Bramley et al, 2015). We would further argue that there is a common public interest in tackling conditions which contribute significantly to antisocial behaviour and lowered levels of trust and social capital in communities.


Sociologists sometimes talk of the ‘symbolic violence’ that certain classes in society experience as a result of the dominance of other groups.


Domestic and other forms of violence and threat underpin many of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) which strongly influence youth transitions and the establishment of patterns of behaviour in adulthood which can be so challenging for services trying to help.


It has been generally understood that SMD tends to carry with it an additional burden of stigma beyond that just associated with low socio-economic status, and this may adversely affect the attitudes of communities, and of service workers, towards people experiencing it. While it may be argued that there has been some progress in opening up public discussion of some SMD-related experiences, including mental ill-health and DVA, and to some extent homelessness, such that they become somewhat more subject to public understanding and sympathy, this is arguably much less the case with substance use and offending, given their ‘transgressive’ nature (Bramley et al, 2015). A broader public and political understanding of the root causes of the whole spectrum of these SMD experiences, and of the devastating impact they have on people’s lives, would, one would hope, help bolster constructive responses at both a personal and systemic level.


At the outset of this research there was an expectation that we would find much evidence of ‘service silos’ and a lack of holistic, ‘joined up working’ in responding to the multiple issues which people experiencing SMD typically have. The accounts of individuals experiencing SMD certainly confirm their multiple needs, and their


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