4 The Troubled Families Programme
76. As we noted in chapter 1, the Troubled Families
Programme (TFP) was developed in conjunction with the Community
Budgets initiative but differs from it in several ways: it uses
centrally set objectives and payment by results criteria. When
set up, the TFP had the goal of turning around the lives of 120,000
"troubled" families by 2015 and saving public money.[179]
Since we began our inquiry the TFP has been expanded to cover
an additional 400,000 "high risk" families with additional
funding of £200 million available until 2016.[180]
In its first year local authorities had worked with 35,618 families
representing 85 per cent of the number of those families they
had agreed to work with in the first year: under 2 per cent (1,675)
of the original 120,000 families had been 'turned around'.[181]
Since then the Government has said that "good progress"
has been made in delivering the programme and on 10 September
2013 it announced that 14,000 families had been turned around
in the first 15 months of the programme.[182]
We intend
to follow the results of the Troubled Families Programme over
the next few years and monitor its impact.
77. Our investigation focused on the rationale
behind singling out one cohort of families for help and assessed
the value of the programme in the context of other work being
done with families through the Whole Place Community Budgets (WPCBs)
and other programmes.
Programme criteria
78. The figure of 120,000 "troubled"
families appears to have originated from a 2004 study on families
and children using data from the Index of Multiple Deprivation.[183]
Although the definition of what constituted a troubled family
was changed in March 2012 and became narrowerbased on the
problems caused by certain families and excluding ill-health and
economic factors,[184]
the figure of 120,000 families remained unchanged. There is, however,
evidence to suggest that this figure significantly underestimates
the number of families with children that require support. The
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) indicated, for example,
that 2.3 million children (17 per cent of children) were living
in relative income poverty at 2010-11.[185]
In addition, figures from the Marmot Review Team indicate that
'fuel poor' households in England increased between 2004 and 2010
from 1.2 million to 4.6 million with poverty and cold housing
adversely affecting children's educational attainment and mental
wellbeing.[186] Nevertheless
Louise Casey, DCLG's Director for the TFP, has defended the use
of the 120,000 figure as a starting point arguing that accurately
assessing the number of families in need of help would take too
long and prove largely academic.[187]
79. The main criteria used by DCLG for identifying
a "troubled family" are that a family:
a) is involved in crime or antisocial behaviour,
b) has children who are regularly truanting and
c) has an adult on out-of-work benefits.[188]
To be automatically identified as troubled a family
would need to meet all of the criteria. Families meeting fewer
of the criteria plus a locally defined fourth criteria can be
included in the troubled list at local discretion. We found that
the fourth criterion was important as without it the definition
was too narrow to allow local authorities to work with families
that were in need of help.[189]
Louise Casey emphasised that this additional criterion was about
"local discretion" and said that local criteria were
largely aimed at "domestic violence, substance misuse, particularly
drug abusers, and looked after children" but varied from
area to area.[190]
80. We found that local authorities were also
working with families, through their community budget programmes,
who were 'on the edge' of the criteria, in order to prevent them
from "descending" into being troubled.[191]
This mix of categories of 'troubled', 'on the edge' and 'just
coping'[192] families
and the change in focus from the broad group of families with
complex needs to troubled families had led to confusion among
local authorities over which were "target families".
This could mean that "positive outcomes" from earlier
initiatives were not always harnessed.[193]
81. The number of families encompassed
by the Troubled Families Programme does not cover all the families
and children that require support. We therefore welcome the expansion
of the programme to cover an additional 400,000 "at risk"
families. However we note that the new resources made available
to the programme until 2016 are not proportional to this expansion.
This additional workload is likely to challenge the capacity and
resources of local areas. As a result it will be even more important
than it has been for the Department for Communities and Local
Government to carefully monitor progress and provide further resources
if necessary.
OVERLAPPING PROGRAMMES
82. The TFP is one of several programmes aimed
at addressing the problems experienced and caused by some families
so we examined whether the TFP was adding to work already being
done or causing duplication. DWP has a separate but related programme,
using money from the European Social Fund, directed at troubled
families with a history of worklessness.[194]A
wider pool of families with complex needs is also being worked
with within Community Budgets. In addition, there are other similar
initiatives, such as 'Safeguarding Children' and 'Looked After
Children'.
83. The central purpose of the TFP has been to
join up family services by appointing troubled families' coordinators
in each of the 152 local authority areas participating in the
programme. These coordinators bring together local partners including
the police, Job Centre Plus, health organisations and schools
to develop plans for working with individual families.[195]
This work is similar to that being done in WPCB and Neighbourhood
Community Budgets (NCB) areas to address the needs of families.[196]
The District Councils' Network (DCN) told us that "there
were considerable concerns over conflicting and overlapping troubled
families initiatives"[197]
adding that "integration of services should not simply seek
to impose new, top-down systems of joint-commissioning and integration.
Such an approach can potentially stifle existing or emerging innovation".[198]
84. Although we received some evidence of concerns
about overlapping programmes, a number of local authorities were
integrating their troubled family and families with complex needs
work, using the TFP to 'kick-start' the process of joined up working.[199]
We heard evidence that the TFP could lay some of the groundwork
for future work which other programmes could take advantage of.[200]
DCLG told us that the TFP offered a "once in a generation
opportunity to understand the problems that affect troubled families
at a national scale" and to provide a "rigorous evidence
base for effective practice and system reform for the future".[201]
85. We fully support the work
being done through the Troubled Families Programme and recognise
that it is providing much needed resources to address the acute
problems faced by some families. However, central and local government
need now to begin to think about the way these families will be
worked with after the Troubled Families Programme ends and how
local authorities can maximise its impact by integrating the current
programme and its results into their future plans. The Troubled
Families Programme should not detract from work being done locally
with the much larger pool of families with complex needs including
children living in poverty and children who do not have a good
level of development at five years old.
Payment by results
86. The use of a payment by results (PBR) system
has been introduced as a part of the TFP,[202]
to ensure that local authorities' efforts meet the Government's
target of turning around 120,000 troubled families by 2015, and
the additional 400,000 "high risk" families, by 2016.[203]
Some 40 per cent of the programme funding is available from central
government through this system: the remaining 60 per cent has
to be found in the budgets of local government and agencies working
with these families.[204]
87. We found that the PBR system has both positive
and negative aspects. It encouraged agreement on specific measurable
outcomes[205] and provided
a strong accountability mechanism for the TFP.[206]
Essex County Council said that PBR worked best when "the
outcomes are clear, specific and easy to measure and track"
but warned that "if these conditions are not met, PBR frameworks
can distort delivery incentives".[207]
Essex County Council gave two examples where PBR risked distorting
incentives. First, the programme could create a disincentive for
authorities to work with more challenging families by creating
a cut-off level of progress below which areas would not receive
a payment.[208] The
second was that work could be skewed towards getting families
back into work by allowing PBR payments on the basis of one family
member moving into continuous employment "regardless of other
outcomes".[209]
We also heard that, if a degree of 'pump-priming' funding was
not available under PBR, the achievement of measurable results
may be set back by the lack of necessary investment[210]
and that agencies might reduce their level of investment and hold
back funds to cover the risk of non-payment of PBR money.[211]
88. In February 2013 DCLG announced that it would
hold back troubled families funding for 2014-15 from local authorities
that had been working with fewer than three quarters of the families
they had pledged to support by 31 March 2013.[212]
The full amount of funding for the second year of the programme
would be withheld until those authorities showed they were supporting
the "vast majority" of those they said they would help
in the first year of the scheme.[213]
The figures released in March 2013 showed that 37 of the 152 local
authority areas worked with less than 75 per cent of their year
one families.[214]
When we asked Louise Casey about the use of PBR to achieve results
within the programme, she responded that:
I am not putting the cosh to these guys over their
results payments yet [...] I would rather they had the time to
get their services organised and their approaches and leadership
right[...] We have to hold our nerve to give these people time
to work with these families.[215]
89. We welcome comments by Louise
Casey that, in the case of the Troubled Families Programme, sanctions
should not be imposed too early in the Programme on local authorities
that have failed to meet the payment by results criteria as this
might affect the programme's overall outcome. In responding to
our report we ask that the Department for Communities and Local
Government clarify whether any local authorities have had funding
withheld for failure to work with 75 per cent of the families
they promised to in the first year. DCLG should also monitor whether
there are any perverse incentives generated by the use of payment
by results within the Troubled Families Programme and take steps
to address these if they arise.
PAYMENT BY RESULTS WITHIN COMMUNITY
BUDGETS
90. Within the context of our broader inquiry
we looked at whether PBR had the potential for use within Community
Budgets. Councils such as Essex were positive about the prospects
for PBR within its WPCB especially for use by local public service
partners "as a tool for commissioning effective public services"
from delivery partners.[216]
Essex County Council said that its
Local partners believe they have a key role to play
in the future of the Whole Place model and are engaged in work
to develop our own PBR to attract social investment into local
programmes focused on Drug Recovery, Alcohol abuse and preventing
acute health and care need.[217]
Cheshire West and Chester Council said that PBR could
also lead to central government creating more "evidence-based
interventions" by allowing it to monitor outcomes of projects
more closely.[218]
It warned that using a PBR mechanism to fund one aspect of a complex
system could lead to the creation of more silos.[219]
The Council suggested instead an approach to PBR that encompassed
a wide range of factors, not simply focusing on one aspect of
a family or service user, an approach that was supported by Geoff
Little from Manchester City Council who said that there was potential
to learn from the approach of the TFP where:
you actually have a way of joining up that payment
by results, so you have horizontal integration at a neighbourhood
level, with outcomes around work, school, antisocial behaviour
and local government saying there are other things for these families
we need to factor into the system, you get real results and everybody
benefits. We need to learn from the TFP as a really creative use
of payment by results.[220]
91. We see potential for Community
Budgets to experiment with the use of payment by results mechanismsset
on a local basiswhich may be particularly useful in motivating
service delivery partners. However, the centrally driven and monitored
Troubled Families Programme stands apart from Community Budgets.
The programme's top-down ethos should not subvert Community Budgets
which must be driven locally so that they can effectively address
local needs. While payment by results by central government may
be one method of assessing the potential of Community Budgets
to produce positive results, this approach also risks distorting
incentives and its use should therefore be carefully considered.
The decision to use payment by results on a local level for Community
Budgets is therefore one for each local area to make.
179 "Troubled Families programme", DCLG
website, www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-troubled-families-turn-their-lives-around,
12 February 2013 Back
180
"Massive expansion of Troubled Families programme announced",
DCLG press notice, 24 June 2013 Back
181
The first year results for the programme were made available in
March 2013. DCLG website, "Troubled Families: progress",
www.gov.uk/government/publications/troubled-families-progress-information-on-the-number-of-families-worked-with-in-year-1 Back
182
DCLG website, "14,000 troubled families turned around",
10 September 2013, and DCLG, Government response to the riots:
the first Communities and Victims Panel's first report, July
2013, see also Ev 56 [DCLG]. Back
183
Department for Education, advisory note, http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/doc/e/estimated%20distribution%20of%20families%20with%20multiple%20problems%20as%20at%20march%2011.doc Back
184
DCLG, Financial framework for the Troubled Families programme's
payment-by-results scheme for local authorities, p 4 Back
185
Department for Work and Pensions, Child poverty in the UK:
Report on the 2010 target, 2012, p 8 Back
186
Marmot Review Team, The health impacts of cold homes and fuel
poverty, 2011, pp 20 and 32 Back
187
"Troubled Families tsar: intervention programme will free
up resources", The Guardian online, www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/07/troubled-families-tsar-intervention-resources
7 April 2013 Back
188
DCLG website, www.gov.uk/government/news/study-to-assess-impact-of-troubled-families-work,
14 March 2013 Back
189
Ev 74 [Essex] Back
190
Q 192 Back
191
Q 177 [Chief Inspector Nicola Faulconbridge] Back
192
As above. Back
193
Ev 71, para 3.2.1 and Ev 72-73, para 6 [DCN] Back
194
Department for Work and Pensions, Evaluation of ESF/DWP families
with multiple problems / troubled families initiative: a feasibility
study, 2012, p 1 Back
195
DCLG, Government response to the riots: the first Communities
and Victims Panel's first report, July 2013 Back
196
For example, Q 177 [Chief Inspector Nicola Faulconbridge] Back
197
Ev 71, para 3.2.1 and Ev 72-73, para 6 Back
198
Ev 72 Back
199
Ev 60 [Tendring], Ev 65 [Birmingham City Council], Ev 73 [Essex]
and Ev 82, para 2.9 [Greater Manchester] Back
200
Ev 56 [DCLG], Ev 19 [Jackie Mould] and Ev 20 [Geoff Little] Back
201
Ev 56 Back
202
As yet the wider Community Budget pilots have not been using PBR. Back
203
See Ev 56 [DCLG]. Back
204
Ev 56 [DCLG] Back
205
Q 205 [Louise Casey] Back
206
Ev 56 [Essex CC] Back
207
Ev 75 Back
208
As above. Back
209
As above. Back
210
Ev 62 [RTPI] Back
211
Ev 75 [Essex] Back
212
"Family scheme funding withheld", Local Government
Chronicle, 14 February 2013, p 2 Back
213
As above. Back
214
DCLG website, "Troubled Families: progress",
www.gov.uk/government/publications/troubled-families-progress-information-on-the-number-of-families-worked-with-in-year-1,
31 May 2013 Back
215
Q 208 Back
216
Ev 75 Back
217
As above. Back
218
Ev 94 Back
219
As above. Back
220
Q 89 Back
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