Communities and neighbourhoods

Troubled families

What is a troubled family?

A troubled family is one that has serious problems - including parents not working, mental health problems, and children not in school - and causes serious problems, such as crime and anti-social behaviour. All of which costs local services a lot of time and money routinely responding to these problems.

How do you know there are 120,000 of them?

By using research which identified the proportion of families who suffer from at least five of the following characteristics:

no one in the family is in work
living in poor or overcrowded housing
no parent has any qualifications
mother has mental health problems
at least one parent has a longstanding illness, disability or infirmity
a low income
an inability to afford a number of food, clothing items.

Having just one of these problems does not mean that the family is a troubled one, but having at least five of these problems on top of each other means families tend to struggle and display a range of other problems.

How much do these families currently cost?

New figures estimate that £9 billion is being spent annually on these 120,000 most troubled families (based on government data collected in October and November 2011). That works out at £75,000 per family per year. £8 billion of this is spent on reacting to the troubles of these families with just £1 billion being spent trying to turn around their lives in a targeted, positive way.

How will the programme work?

This programme marks a step change in the way that we deal with troubled families in England. Estimates of numbers locally will be agreed and a plan of action for dealing with each family will need to be drawn up.

This programme will run primarily on a payment-by-results basis to incentivise local authorities and other partners to take action to turn around the lives of troubled families in their area by 2015. The Government will offer to pay up to 40 per cent of local authorities' costs of dealing with these families (Payment by Results Model) payable only when they and their partners achieve success with families.

The Government will also fund a national network of troubled family 'trouble-shooters' in each (upper-tier) local council. The trouble-shooters will operate at a senior level to oversee the programme of action in their area.

What does turning them around mean?

Turning troubled families around means:

getting children back in the classroom and not wandering the streets
getting parents onto a work programme, to stop them committing crime.

It also means that they stop being such high cost to the taxpayer.

We will be working on a definition of turning round a family for the purposes of releasing funding to local authorities as part of the payment by results arrangements.

It is unacceptable to leave the children in these families to lead the same disruptive and harmful lives as their parents. The Government believes that these and all families should have the same aspirations to education and employment. We owe it to these families and to their local communities not to excuse their behaviour but to demand that they change their ways.

£8 billion is a significant amount of money. What is this being spent on?

A large proportion of this money is spent on taking children into care (fostering, residential care, adoption and the costs of social workers) but also the significant criminal justice costs of children and adults committing crime. It also includes eviction costs and benefit payments. To a lesser extent, the costs of drug and alcohol dependency, specialist schooling (e.g. Pupil Referral Units) and health costs are also a factor.

What money will be made available for this?

The Prime Minister has announced that £448 million will be made available to the Troubled Families Unit to turn around the lives of 120,000 families over the next three years. This money will need to be match-funded by local areas and will follow a Payment by Results model (see above). The Troubled Families Unit and local authorities will work up the detail over the next few months.

Is this new money?

The £448 million has been found from the Department for Communities and Local Government and a number of other government departments: the Department for Education, the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice. Each made a contribution to the programme by reprioritising their Departmental spend.

Previous attempts have failed with these families. Aren't we throwing good money after bad in difficult economic times?

We are already spending money on these families: in 999 calls, A and E visits, neighbour nuisance teams, youth offending workers, keeping children in care and so on.

This is a massive spend that at best only contains a family in the dire situation they are in. We need to spend some now to shift this balance and refocus money on achieving genuine and lasting change.