Pulse.Assent

Local Government Minister Rishi Sunak has welcomed the progress made by the Troubled Families Programme over the past year to help families with multiple and complex problems improve their lives, to reform local services and to reduce pressure on the public purse.

The second Troubled Families annual report published today (27 March 2018) details how the programme is working with families as a whole to provide the stability and practical support they need to overcome complicated issues including ‘worklessness’, uncontrolled debt and truancy.

This programme of whole family working has achieved significant progress with:

• more than 90,000 families meeting the improvement goals agreed with local services against each of the problems they need to overcome – up more than 48,000 on the previous year
• almost 14,000 of families where progress has been achieved, 1 or more adult has succeeded in moving into continuous employment – an increase of over 4,800 since last year
• reduced demand on children’s social care services; the programme’s focus on preventative services is starting to show positive results with families getting the type of help they most need, including reducing the number of cases that need to be escalated to children’s social care

Local Government Minister Rishi Sunak said:

This report details the hard work that’s been happening across the country over the past year to help families with a variety of challenging problems improve their lives, reduce their dependency on local services, and in doing so deliver better value for taxpayers.

Adults who were once far from the job market are now moving into work. Children are getting the right support they need and local leaders are encouraging and challenging all services working with children and their families to act early and offer whole family support, to stop their problems becoming worse.

Rather than responding to each problem, or single family member separately, assigned Troubled Families key workers champion working with the whole family. This means they receive support from coordinated services working together to identify and solve their problems as early as possible, rather than merely reacting to crises.

Since the current programme began in 2015, local authorities and their partners have worked with 289,809 eligible families. This compares with only 2,000 families who had received whole family support in England between January 2006 and March 2010.

In addition to working successfully with families struggling with a variety of chaotic issues in their lives, the report outlines how the programme is also driving real long-term change across local services including police, housing, social care and Jobcentres. Services and professionals are now better connected and working in partnership.

Rather than circling around families with multiple and separate assessments and appointments, local authorities are using the programme to work across organisational and cultural boundaries to achieve better lives for the families in need and produce savings for the public purse.

Following a review of the programme’s funding model, the annual report also sets out how a new payment structure will be piloted in 11 selected local authorities, with upfront payments made to help support families and accelerate change across local services. This new ‘Earned Autonomy’ model builds on the existing Payments by Results system in which local authorities are paid for each family who either achieves ‘significant and sustained progress’ or moves into continuous employment.

Case study

Staffordshire’s local Troubled Families Programme has driven service reform and reduced demand on children’s social care services. Since 2015, of the 891 families that have achieved continuous employment or significant and sustained progress through the Troubled Families Programme (up to 31 January 2018), 15 families – less than 2% – required further early help intervention and just 12 families – required any future children’s social care intervention

Further information

This is the second annual report of the current Troubled Families Programme and meets the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s statutory duty to report annually on performance. See Supporting disadvantaged families: annual report of the Troubled Families Programme 2017 to 2018.

The current Troubled Families Programme was rolled out in England in April 2015 and replaced the first programme which had been in place since 2012. The programme will continue support for disadvantaged families with complex problems and will work with up to 400,000 families by 2020.

The annual report confirms that the programme continues to reach families with complex and multiple problems. In the year before starting the programme, troubled families had the following characteristics compared to the general population:

• children were nearly 8 times more likely to be classified as a Child in Need
• adults were 7 times more likely to have a caution or conviction
• adults were 5 times more likely to be claiming benefits
• children were nearly 3 times more likely to be persistently absent from school

In addition:

• over two fifths of troubled families had a family member with a mental health issue
• just under a quarter of troubled families had a family member affected by an incident of domestic abuse or violence

The 11 areas that will pilot the new Earned Autonomy funding model are: Barking and Dagenham, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Camden, Cheshire West and Chester, Durham, Islington, Kent, Leeds, Liverpool and Staffordshire.

A man with previous violent offence convictions has had his sentence increased after the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland QC MP, referred it for being too low.

On 20 August 2017 Vandross Williams, 25, entered the Jack of Diamonds club in Bristol city centre with a large knife. After an altercation with 2 acquaintances inside the club, the group moved to the road outside where Williams proceeded to repeatedly stab his victim, leaving him with life-threatening injuries.

Williams was originally sentenced to 9 years imprisonment at Bristol Crown Court. Today, after the Solicitor General’s reference, the Court of Appeal increased his sentence to 13 years in prison.

Commenting on the sentence increase, the Solicitor General said:

Williams has a history of violence and has now caused serious physical harm to a victim. His crime deserved a tougher punishment, and I am pleased the Court has now seen fit to increase his sentence.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has today (27 March 2018) announced action to ensure that Northamptonshire residents receive the high quality services they need and deserve.

Mr Javid said he was minded to send Commissioners in to Northamptonshire County Council to take direct control over the authority’s financial management and reporting processes.

He also invited the district and borough councils in the area to submit proposals on restructuring local government in the county to best meet the needs of the communities they serve.

This follows the publication of an independent report into the financial management of the local authority which found that failures at the council were not due to a lack of funding, but as a result of poor management, a lack of budgetary control and a culture which discouraged challenge.

The Communities Secretary reassured residents in Northamptonshire saying that their essential services will continue to be delivered and praised hardworking staff at the authority, emphasising that the report had not found them to be at fault in providing quality services.

Sajid Javid said:

The findings of the independent report were extremely serious and I am proposing decisive action to ensure that local people receive the high quality services they need and deserve.

Northamptonshire County Council has 10 days to respond before the Communities Secretary will make his final decision.

Northamptonshire and the borough councils will have 3 months to submit proposals.

Unlike other parts of the public sector, there is a legal requirement for all councils to set a balanced budget. Northamptonshire has taken additional steps to ensure its budget is balanced, and a balanced budget for 2018 to 2019 has recently been passed by its Full Council.

Never before have so many countries come together to expel Russian diplomats. By last night, the total stood at more than 20 nations collectively deciding to remove more than 100 Kremlin officials. In the process these allies of Britain have consciously placed themselves at risk of retaliation.

Their principled stand in the aftermath of the use of a nerve agent in Salisbury on March 4 may well carry a price, perhaps in the form of some of their own diplomats being removed from Moscow, so I am deeply grateful to all the nations who have resolved to act. And I believe that yesterday’s events could become a turning point.

Do not underestimate the effect of these measures on Russia’s networks of espionage. When the Foreign Office evicted 23 undeclared intelligence officers from the Russian embassy in London, we eviscerated the Kremlin’s painstakingly assembled operation in Britain.

Yesterday’s action delivers a further blow from which Russian intelligence will need many years to recover. But I will resist any temptation to proclaim that the response was all about us. Our allies have responded because they share our view of the threat posed by the Kremlin to their values and security.

The use of a banned nerve agent on British soil falls into a wider pattern of President Putin’s reckless behaviour. In the past four years, the Kremlin has annexed Crimea, ignited the flames of conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine, hacked the German Bundestag, interfered in elections across the world, sought to hide Assad’s use of poison gas and joined his onslaught against the Syrian people.

The common thread is Mr Putin’s willingness to defy the essential rules on which the safety of every country depends. Hence every responsible nation shares a vital interest in standing firm against him.

Our allies have not been deterred by Russia’s usual tactics for avoiding pressure. Sure enough, the Kremlin began pumping out a deluge of lies almost as soon as Sergei and Yulia Skripal had entered intensive care.

So far, my colleagues at the Foreign Office have identified 21 theories broadcast by the Russian state media, ranging from the sublime (Skripal overdosed because he was addicted to novichok) to the absurd (America did it to “destabilise the world”) to the offensive (The UK poisoned its own city to spoil the World Cup).

There was a time when this tactic of sowing doubt might have been effective, but no one is fooled any more. I believe yesterday was a moment when the cynicism of the propaganda machine was exposed for all to see. The western alliance took decisive action and Britain’s partners came together against the Kremlin’s reckless ambitions.

Originally published here