Trouble-shooting problem families is worth every penny it costs

Is it really worth spending money on troubleshooters to help families with multiple problems?  Indeed it is.  Just look at the numbers.  Existing local authority family intervention programmes (FIPs) have achieved impressive results.  Between February 2007 and March 2011, families enrolled in FIPs saw a 58 per cent reduction in anti-social behaviour, and their children were 53 per cent less likely to truant or have problems at school.  

Families in the programme saw a 47 per cent reduction in poor family functioning — a basket of measures which include poor parenting, relationship or family breakdown, and domestic violence.  This measure also included a 34 per cent reduction in the number of families with child protection issues. The effects are large and will have an impact on future expenditure in a wide range of budgets, from pupil referral units to youth offending teams.  

A real success story, and not just according to government figures — these are from an independent review of the FIPs which also found that the improvements in parenting and other  behaviours were sustained one year after leaving the programme.

There are two problems with the numbers.  Firstly, the programmes had least success in getting people back to work.  Almost two thirds of families entering the programme had no adult in work and only 20 per cent of families saw a change in this during the time frame of the study.  This raises questions about the chances of tackling joblessness amongst the families David Cameron wants to target, especially in a time of increasing unemployment.

Secondly, the numbers involved in the programme have been small and have expanded only slowly.  8,841 families entered a family intervention programme in the four years of the study period.  This is nothing like the scale of intervention required to reach the 120,000 families which have featured in all the headlines.

Troubleshooter-based family interventions cost at least £10,000 per family, with most studies of different projects showing expenditure closer to £20,000 for each family.  This puts the total bill for intervening with 120,000 families at anywhere between £1.2bn and £2.4bn.  Although the savings to be made in the long run are eye-wateringly large, the size of the initial investment needed dwarfs the central funding announced so far which, at £448m, leaves the heavy lifting to be done by the finance departments at local authorities.  

The current financial squeeze at the local level, combined with a central government commitment to allowing councils to make up their own minds as to how to spend their money, raises serious doubts about whether a significant proportion of the 120,000 really will get help from this programme.

It may not matter that not all of these families are reached.  If local authorities use scarce budgets to target the most needy families, they will still see a strong return on their investment in the short to medium term and will free up budgets spent on rehousing, foster care and child protection to apply to other pressing needs.  

If, on the other hand, the payment-for-results approach leads agencies to concentrate on the least troubled amongst the 120,000, then the programme would be seriously weakened in its impact.  It might be wiser to reconsider the criteria for entry into the programme and talk of the 50,000 rather than the 120,000.  Better to intervene well with a smaller number than spread resources over a larger target number of families which is seen as arbitrary by many.

The idea of helping struggling families is not new.  It featured in the coalition agreement of May 2010 but languished amongst second-tier policy thoughts until the riots of August forced a response from Number 10.  

From the first day of looting to the £448m announcement, only four months elapsed.  For any policy area other than deficit reduction and financial crisis this is a rapid timeframe and offers lessons on how to make things happen within the coalition structure.  External events are a great spur to action and to attracting the vital interest and prestige of Number 10.  It is wise to avoid any routes that require lengthy investigation or parliamentary debate and, finally, it is a good idea to appoint Louise Casey if you want to make sure that the usual barriers to progress are overcome.   

There are alternatives to Louise Casey.  Julliette Mountford was brought into Number 10 in early September to advise on family issues.  Within a month she had resurrected the idea of giving parents a voucher to access parenting education and mobilised funding to underwrite a pilot trial in three areas.

Somewhere in the midst of this success lurks a question.  Is there an absence of ministerial consensus about the big ideas in family policy which makes the government reliant on a few energetic and talented officials who are able to use their knowledge of Whitehall and the authority of their position to bring different departments into line long enough for a policy initiative to surface?

When Labour produced its Children’s Plan in 2007  it was criticised for serving up a range of individual ideas of varying originality that were only integrated in the sense of appearing in the same document at the same time.  

So far the coalition’s family initiatives face similar problems.  They also risk being overwhelmed by the consequences of unemployment, deficit reduction and crisis in the eurozone.  Which is a shame.  The times demand big ideas on family reform, and a vision of how life can be better for millions once the worst of the financial weather has passed.   Ideas of this size require ministerial leadership and focus which appears to be lacking at the moment.

This might be due to some confusion as to where leadership lies on family issues.  David Cameron is notably interested in this policy area.  Sarah Teather, whose portfolio includes families, reports to a Secretary of State for Education who has been much less public in his enthusiasm for family reform.  

Meanwhile Ian Duncan Smith used his time in opposition to develop a strong line in family policy and seems no less interested in this area now that he is leading reforms to the benefits system.  It may be that the current lack of big ideas on families comes down to a timing issue.  Reform of family law was a commitment in the coalition agreement which gave rise to 18 months of deliberation by the Norgrove review and is currently awaiting decisions on how the coalition would like to proceed.  

There are some difficult choices to be made, not least about how far the rights of children to a relationship with their father after separation should be mentioned in statute.  Norgrove first recommended legislation to this effect, and then changed his mind saying that progress depends on a general social expectation of the full involvement of both parents in the lives of their children before separation, not on changes in the law.   This seems like a quiet passing of the buck, but doing nothing might have some attractions for a government focused more on financial than social issues.

Reforms to paternity and maternity leave also seem to be jammed in the machinery of government.  The Modern Workplaces proposals put forward by BIS in May last year have enjoyed lengthy consultation and, with almost six months expired since the end of the consultation period, no official word about the results of the process of the future of the proposals has emerged.  

On both family law and parental leave it is still just about reasonable for the government to claim that we are at the stage of the thought process which requires some quiet reflection before definitive action is proposed.  But there are signs of drift and hints of a yearning for the easy life which reduce the prospect that this coalition will be basing its legacy on important reforms to family life.

The coalition made an energetic start to family reform, commissioning studies, supporting reviews and talking ambitiously about making this the most family-friendly country in Europe.  

By the end of 2012 we will know whether this energy can be transformed into important changes to the law on separation and on maternity and paternity leave which reflect the changing patterns of family life and, in particular, the expectations we should have on the contribution fathers make to the care of their children.

Rob Williams is Chief Executive of the Fatherhood Institute www.fatherhoodinstitute.org