Tory Party Conference: MP advocates Troubled Families approach to boost life chances

John Glen, MP for South Wiltshire and parliamentary private secretary to Chancellor Philip Hammond, said integrated working is essential to providing the kind of effective support for families that boosts prospects for children.

The government is yet to launch a long-awaited life chances strategy that was promised earlier this year.

The strategy had been pencilled in for publication immediately after the EU referendum but was shelved.

Speaking at a fringe meeting hosted by the Child Poverty Action Group and think-tank Bright Blue at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Glen said that government plans do not necessarily need to consist of new ideas.

"There are many misconceptions around life chances, and I think that it's often everybody looking for a new idea that's going to be a silver bullet," he said.

He added that the Troubled Families initiative is "the sort of approach we need to see more of".

"It's messy, it's expensive, but [attempts to improve life chances] will need the integration of all the elements we saw in that Troubled Families work to deliver the sorts of effective interventions that are needed to help the small numbers of families that need that support," he said.

"It will need us to assess, practically, on a family level, what the distribution of need is, and where an intervention can be made that will deliver an opportunity for somebody to help a child stay at school, get onto an apprenticeship, or secure a job.

"We need to be ready to devise programmes that are willing to persevere.

"We need more of the same, more integration, and less of a focus on income levels, and more of a focus on opportunities and making sure those opportunities and the pathways to those opportunities are there."

Under the Troubled Families programme, local authorities began work in April 2012 with 120,000 families across England identified as experiencing multiple, inter-related challenges with the aim of turning their lives around by May 2015.

Since then the initiative has been extended, with the aim of covering an additional 400,000 troubled families by 2020.