Troubled families scheme 'on track' claims Pickles
The troubled families scheme has reached 62,000 families, with 22,000 ‘turned around’ at the halfway stage of the programme, the Communities and Local Government department has claimed.
The government initiative, which seeks to intervene in England’s hardest-to-help families, targets 120,000 families across the country over three years.
It offers local authorities a payment-by-results scheme, where the government will provide £4,000 of funding per family if the interventions are successful.
The programme targets families who are involved in youth crime or anti-social behaviour, have children who are excluded from school or regularly truanting or have an adult on out-of-work benefits.
Statistics from the CLG show Wandsworth is working with 90 per cent of its troubled families and Newcastle is working with 80 per cent.
Wakefield has already ‘turned’ more than half of its 930 troubled families around, and Leicestershire almost half of its 810. The CLG defines ‘turning around’ as achieving outcomes such as getting children back to school, cutting crime and anti-social behaviour or getting adults into work.
Eric Pickles, communities and local government minister, said: ‘Councils are making great strides in a very short space of time, dealing with families that have often had problems and created serious issues in their communities for generations.
‘These results show that these problems can be dealt with through a no nonsense and common sense approach, bringing down costs to the taxpayer at the same time.’
