Councils challenged to improve support for troubled families

Her latest report Working With Troubled Families offers case studies on intensive family support schemes and brings together available evidence and guidance for councils.

The report stresses the importance of councils appointing a dedicated worker for each family to build up trust and offer a “persistent, assertive and challenging” approach.

Based on evidence available up to March 2012, the report outlines how there was a 59 per cent drop in antisocial behaviour, 45 per cent fall in crime, 52 per cent reduction in truancy and a 36 per cent drop in child protection issues among families targeted by intensive support projects.

Incidents of domestic violence also fell by 57 per cent and mental health issues by 24 per cent. ?However, programmes for troubled families have seen less success in addressing employment and training issues, achieving a drop of just 14 per cent in this area.

Rhian Beynon, head of policy at Family Action, argued that while intensive support for families is the right approach, central government and councils must do more to tackle “underlying health and mental health problems”.

She said: “I would like to see more emphasis on tackling these issues. If you look at the results there is far greater success with tackling antisocial behaviour but less with mental health.”

Beynon meanwhile called on councils implementing the scheme to build strong partnerships across health, social care and other organisations supporting families.

“A common problem is a lack of willingness in some areas for health, social care and the police to work together,” she says. “More work needs to be done to build those partnerships.”

Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, warned that more government investment is needed to make sure that the troubled families scheme is a success.

“The Prime Minister has committed the government to meeting the ambitious aim of turning around the lives of 120,000 families by the election,” she said.

“In order to achieve this the government will need to take on board the suggestions within this report and also ensure that greater resources are available to councils and charities to ramp up their work with these families.” 

The government is offering councils up to £4,000 for every family whose lives they turn around. This includes £100 if a member of the family gets a job or is enrolled on the government’s Work Programme.

This funding package lasts until 2015 and covers around 40 per cent of the cost of support, with councils expected to fund the rest.

Casey said: “This report makes a strong case about what works – family intervention that involves one dedicated worker for each family, providing tough but persistent challenge and support, has a dramatic impact, not just on the life chances of those within the families, but on the communities around them who suffer from the effects of truancy, youth crime and antisocial behaviour.”