Troubled families agenda brings more youth workers into the fold

The troubled families agenda has until now focused largely on stopping children being taken into care, reducing youth crime, getting parents into work and improving school attendance.

But according to a survey of councils by the National Youth Agency (NYA), youth workers are beginning to play a bigger role in supporting families. Of 57 respondents, including local authority heads of service and assistant directors, 70 per cent said the youth service is already involved in their local troubled families programme. Of the rest, 60 per cent said the service is planning to get involved.

Ken Meeson, leader of Solihull Council, says youth work forms a key plank of his authority’s troubled families work, and coincides with a restructuring of youth services.

A total of 355 troubled families have been identified in Solihull and work has begun with 15 families at an intensive level before the programme runs fully. All the families have a key worker, liaising with various agencies that can provide support, particularly the youth service where young people are involved. Some of the family co-ordinators being trained are youth services staff.

“We have been finding out what the young people want – what will be useful to them,” Meeson says. “With teenagers, our workers are increasingly doing counselling sessions, which has begun to have an impact already. It is moving away from the traditional table tennis and disco approach to things that actually benefit young people, whether it be helping them to write CVs and access guidance on employment, or liaising with their school if they are having problems.”

The local authority has introduced a more discreet youth facility in the form of a ground-floor flat in a block of residential apartments. Known as “The Den”, the flat has been converted into a drop-in youth centre, which also offers advice on issues such as sexual health and drugs.

“They are not walking through the door of a very formalised youth centre, which can make it more appealing for some young people,” Meeson says. “They can get information and seek respite from the problems they are facing at home.”

Positive steps
Alex Stutz, head of policy at the NYA, believes the troubled families programme offers youth services the opportunity to protect jobs at a time of stringent cuts.

“It is a new agenda with some government money at a time of cuts to the youth sector,” he says. “Youth workers have the kind of skills that fit in with the agenda, dealing with problems in a holistic way, putting children first and being non-judgmental. These young people may not have experienced positive interactions with agencies involved with troubled families, but might get that from youth workers.”

Under the troubled families programme, councils are able to claim up to £4,000 in government money on a payment-by-results basis for each family they work with, if they are successful in reducing youth crime, truancy and antisocial behaviour, or getting a parent off benefits and into work. But whether local troubled families schemes will result in more investment in youth services is far from certain. Only 12 respondents in the NYA survey said additional resources had been allocated to youth services as part of the work to date.

David Wright, chief executive of the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services, argues that youth work involvement in troubled families programmes must not lead to a shift from open-access services towards crisis interventions. “There’s a terrible temptation just to follow the money,” he says. “But it is important to keep investing in preventative services to make sure the number of families becoming troubled is reduced.”