Government announces £450m plan to tackle troubled families

Plans to turn around the lives of 120,000 of the most troubled families in England were announced by the Prime Minister just before Christmas. The initiative will attract nearly £450 million from existing departmental budgets over four years. The funding will help pay for a network of people who will identify families in need of help; make sure they get access to the right services; and ensure that action is taken. In Greater Manchester, over 8,000 families are expected to be targeted.
The funding will cover 40 per cent of costs, which will be made on a payment-by-results basis. Areas that want to use it will have to agree to fund the other 60 per cent themselves. Success will be measured against defined criteria, such as:
• children back into school;
• a reduction in families’ criminal and anti-social behaviour;
• parents on the road back to work;
• reduced costs to the taxpayer and local authorities.
A new Troubled Families Team based within the Communities and Local Government (CLG) department has been established to join up efforts across Whitehall, provide expert help to local areas and drive forward the strategy.
Recent figures show that troubled families cost the tax payer an estimated £9 billion per year, equivalent to £75,000 per family.
This is spent on protecting the children in these families and responding to the crime and anti-social behaviour they perpetrate. The costs are exemplified by the fact that children who live in troubled families are 36 times more likely to be excluded from school and six times more likely to have been in care or to have contact with the police.

In the New Year, the Government announced a further programme to help England's most troubled families. Run in conjunction with local authorities and the organisations delivering the Work Programme, the new £200 million outreach service will help families with multiple problems overcome barriers to employment. Although eight welfare-to-work providers (mostly in the private sector) will lead the payment-by-results initiative, the majority of the work will be delivered on the ground by local voluntary and charitable groups, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.

♦ The issue of ‘troubled families’ is one of the four priority areas in Greater Manchester’s ‘whole place’ Community Budget pilot, which received the go-ahead from the CLG in December (see link below).