When landlords step in
Gordon Brown’s a fan. The figures - a halving of targeted families facing anti-social behaviour sanctions - speak for themselves. And now they are backed by special tenancies. So why are landlords reluctant to use family intervention projects? Ben Cook finds out.
Family intervention projects work’ was Gordon Brown’s unequivocal verdict in his speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton last week. He pledged that the 50,000 ‘most chaotic families’ in Britain would be placed in these schemes, designed to tackle the anti-social behaviour of and help society’s most challenging residents.
FIPs produce results - a 2008 study found the projects halved the proportion of targeted families facing sanctions for anti-social behaviour. But despite the prime minister’s belief that FIPs are the key to tackling extreme anti-social behaviour, local authorities have failed to implement them to the degree the government had hoped when it began promoting them in January 2006 as part of its flagship respect agenda.
Earlier this year, the then health, now home secretary Alan Johnson and children’s secretary Ed Balls wrote to every English council asking them to ‘expand and accelerate’ FIPs.
This followed the introduction in January of new family intervention tenancies intended to remove confusion over the type of tenancy the projects require. These are offered to tenants facing possession proceedings in their existing home due to bad behaviour. Under the tenancies, residents move to dispersed or purpose-built homes, where they are given support to help them change their behaviour.
Despite government estimates that 600 family intervention tenancies per year would be used by social landlords, research carried out by Inside Housing earlier this year revealed that as few as six had been used (14 August).
According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, around 100 FIPs have been set up across England to date and they will help ‘up to 5,000’ families this year. Their prime objective is to stop anti-social behaviour and end the cycle of homelessness in cases where families have been evicted from their homes.
FIPs can take several forms: outreach support to families in their own home; support in a non-secure tenancy in the local community; or 24-hour support in a residential unit where families live with project staff.
Caroline Davey, director of policy and campaigns at Shelter, supports the projects. ‘FIPs are an important way of tackling the root causes [of anti-social behaviour],’ she says. ‘The philosophy of going to the heart of the problem is absolutely the right way to go about it.’
But if FIPs are as effective as everyone says they are, why have social landlords been reluctant to implement them? It appears that a lack of resources, funding methods, and the voluntary, rather than compulsory, nature of family intervention tenancies have all played a part.
Abigail Davies, head of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing, says that although FIPs are effective, they are resource-intensive and require highly skilled staff to meet the challenge of getting families to change their behaviour. ‘It’s not easy,’ she says. ‘You need a specialised building and specialised onsite 24-hour staff. It’s a lot of money spent on a small amount of people.’
Value for money?
So how much are we talking about? Landlord Charter Housing has drawn up proposals for a FIP that would work with eight to 10 families at a cost of £200,000 per year. For Charter, up to £25,000 per family represents good value. A spokesperson says that the usual cost - to agencies such as the police, education and housing - of dealing with one problem family can amount to nearly £153,000 per year. Mr Brown’s conference pledge to spend £36 million on FIPs up to 2012 should sweeten the deal further.
The same cannot be said for family intervention tenancies, according to Ms Davies. ‘Making it a specialist tenancy is a technical issue - I don’t see how it helps families. You could bolt support on top of a normal tenancy,’ she says. ‘It can also become difficult for an organisation to manage people on different tenancies.’
Others suggest the tenancies could be acting as a barrier to the projects. Andrew Oates, assistant director of neighbourhoods and customers at Liverpool Mutual Homes - which has successfully used one such tenancy - says social housing providers are hamstrung by the fact that tenants are not obliged to accept the special tenancies.
‘Currently, the family intervention tenancy is optional - if a family needs to be relocated, we have to serve notice that they are losing security of tenure and we have to tell them to get legal advice,’ he explains. ‘But the legal advice they’re given is not to sign anything.’
Mr Oates argues that, if the government wants to increase the use of family intervention tenancies - and so too the projects they are designed to facilitate - it must make them compulsory.
Landlords’ fear of the tenancies doesn’t stop there, he adds. ‘You have to do a risk assessment of the area you’re moving them to - there is some concern that you’re just moving the problem from one area to another. There is the risk that the same thing will happen in another neighbourhood.’
But Mr Oates is a fan of the general concept of FIPs. ‘The ideas behind FIPs are the way forward - the earlier you get in the better.’
Indeed, several FIPs have proved successful. A Nottingham Council-run FIP was established in early 2008 and is already starting to produce positive results that have been recognised by the prime minister.
For landlords that don’t want to step in with an FIP, however, there are alternative methods of tackling anti-social behaviour. Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, for example, is planning to run a series of workshops aimed at 13 to 14-year-olds that seek to convey the reality of life in prison. The workshops will be run in partnership with the No Way Trust, an educational charity set up by prison officers who want to turn people away from crime.
Sue Kershaw, communities first co-ordinator at Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, which also uses FIPs, says: ‘FIPs target specific families but the workshops are open to all young people - we give them a real view of what it’s like to be sent down. They see the inside of a police van and the lack of dignity involved in being in prison.’
Meanwhile, Circle 33 Housing leads the Holly Street Children and Young People’s Partnership, which incorporates a youth centre, a youth committee and a dedicated youth partnership manager. In the last year and a half, the partnership - which is run by Circle 33 on behalf of housing associations Kush (part of Places for People), North London Muslim, and Newlon, as well as Hackney Council - has provided 200 young people with a range of sporting and social activities, in addition to opportunities for personal development such as IT training and music sessions.
According to Circle 33, 15 young people have been placed in employment and 75 have completed various accredited courses. Meanwhile, the housing association says crime in the Holly Street area of Hackney has dropped by around 26 per cent.
Bina Omare, community development and growth assistant director at Circle Anglia, says: ‘It’s been successful - we made sure it wasn’t about addressing anti-social behaviour and made it about helping young people into training, education and employment.’
Budget restrictions
Although other methods of combating anti-social behaviour can be successful, there is still a widely held belief that FIPs - despite the reluctance of some social landlords to implement them - do work.
Anna Dent, policy officer at the National Housing Federation, argues that the lower than anticipated take-up of FIPs is not due to a ‘lack of recognition that they are effective’. She adds: ‘It’s quite intensive in terms of staffing and resources, but I would expect our members to be involved where there is a need for FIPs.’
But a source close to the Local Government Association argues that the way in which FIPs are funded makes it difficult for councils to get them up and running. ‘The number of FIPs being established has been limited for the simple reason that it’s ring-fenced money,’ the source says. ‘The government provides a ring-fenced budget to children’s services which then has to leverage in support from health and adult services. This can be difficult if budgets have already been set by those services.’
Whether the prime minister’s multimillion pound cash pledge and promotion of FIPs is enough to overcome the barriers to implementation remains to be seen.
Success story
A family intervention project in action
Police, social care and education services referred a Nottingham family to the local family intervention project, run by the council, following reports of anti-social behaviour and school non-attendance, as well as concerns about child neglect. The family consisted of six children, a father with mental health problems and a mother who appeared alcohol dependent and depressed.
Six months before the family was referred to the FIP, they were living in local authority housing. But when they were served a notice to quit, the family abandoned the tenancy and sought private rented accommodation. The FIP team engaged with the private landlord as well as the family during its time in private housing. The private landlord had intended to evict the family but agreed to wait while the FIP was under way.
FIP staff visited at midnight and at 7am to ensure children went to bed and got up at appropriate times. The parents were subject to parenting contracts, while acceptable behaviour contracts were served on the children. The mother was supported to access alcohol counselling services.
There have been no complaints of anti-social behaviour in the last nine months. All the school-age children are now in full-time education, attending more than 90 per cent of the time.
Their mother has benefited from the specialist counselling support: her confidence has grown and she has attended employment training. Her family has now exited the FIP.
The family was engaged with the FIP team between June 2008 and February 2009. The council estimates that the cost of engaging a member of staff with the family was around £12,000. In return the intervention saved the costs of three of the children potentially being taken into care. If the family had been rehoused following enforcement action and care proceedings the cost to local agencies would have been between £250,000 and £350,000 in a single year, the council says.
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