Social workers' leader criticises Troubled Families programme

The association says feedback from its members suggests the £448m flagship government scheme is not turning around the lives of families with entrenched social problems for the long term as it aims to do.

The criticism follows the publication last week of latest figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) that showed just a third of the aimed for 120,000 families have been “turned around” in the first two years of the Troubled Families programme.

Families involved in the programme receive intensive support from children’s services and other agencies, and are classed as being turned around if they achieve a number of targets based on addressing problems such as persistent truanting, antisocial behaviour, crime and long-term unemployment.

But Bridget Robb, BASW chief executive, said: “There is little evidence that this scheme is producing long-lasting change and yet millions of pounds of public money continues to be ploughed into it.

“It is ironic that the austerity agenda being pursued by the government is pushing families already facing difficulty to the brink and helping to create some of the social problems the initiative is attempting to fix.”

Robb also criticised the 120,000 figure as being “plucked out of thin air” and based on old research.

“It has put local authorities in the position of having to search for families to meet a spurious government target,” she added.

The DCLG data reveals that 39,500 families had been turned around by the end of March, 17,500 of which had been over the past six months. The programme aims to have helped 120,000 by April 2015, with an additional 400,000 families to be worked with over the following two years.

A DCLG spokesman said: “Councils have changed the way they work with troubled families to make sure that one team or worker is providing intensive and practical support, not a dozen different public services responding to their problems.

"The latest figures show that more than 111,000 families have been identified for help, of which 97,000 are now being actively worked with under the programme and almost 40,000 have already been turned around, with children in school for at least three terms.”