Government’s ‘troubled families’ programme is failing; we knew it would

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Remember back in April last year, when Vox Political said the Coalition government’s plan to stop children in ‘troubled’ families from playing truant, while finding work for the adults and stopping both from committing crime, was doomed to failure?

If you don’t, it’s not surprising (our readership back then was around a quarter of its current level) – and you haven’t missed much, because the scheme is back in the news as it is (again, unsurprisingly) failing.

The VP article pointed out that the government had been fiddling the figures in its bid to make it seem that 120,000 such families exist in the UK; in fact, “the number came from Labour research on disadvantaged families with multiple and complex needs, rather than families that caused problems,” according to ‘trouble families tsar’ Louise Casey at the time.

The article pointed out that local councils, offered a £4,000 bonus for each ‘troubled’ family they identified and helped (for want of a better word) were shoehorning families into the scheme – whether they qualified or not – just to make up the numbers.

It was doomed from the start.

So today we have figures obtained by Labour’s Hilary Benn, showing that around 106,500 families have been identified for the scheme (according to averages worked out from councils that responded to a Freedom of Information request). Of these, only around 35,500 were engaged by the scheme, which then failed in three-quarters of cases (around 26,600 families).

That leaves 8,878 families who actually came back to the straight-and-narrow – less than one-thirteenth of the target figure.

A success rate this low could have been achieved if the government had done nothing.

(That seems to be a running theme with the Coalition. What else does it remind us of? Ah, yes… The Work Programme. In this context it is extremely interesting that Mr Benn said the biggest obstruction to the scheme was the Work Programme’s failure “to deliver jobs to the poorest people in society”.)

According to The Guardian, “Data from 133 councils out of the 152 participating in the scheme found that almost one in seven families that had been “turned around” were either still on drugs, had children missing from school or involved in criminal acts.

“Another 60 per cent of households deemed to have been successfully helped by the scheme in March still had adults on unemployment benefits after leaving the programme.”

Bearing in mind the £4,000 ‘carrot’ that was waved in front of councils as encouragement for them to take part, you’ll enjoy the revelation that each local authority claimed to have found an average of 812 troubled families – 20 per cent more than central government had estimated.

Again, this is hardly surprising. Government-imposed council tax freezes have starved local authorities of money and £4,000, multiplied by 812, brings an average of £3,250,000 into each local authority that they would not, otherwise, have had.

So much for David Cameron’s plan to “heal the scars of the broken society”.

The Guardian also tells us that the ‘troubled families’ programme was launched by Cameron as a Big Society (remember that?) response to the riots of summer 2011.

In fact it doesn’t matter what the Coalition government does – or, indeed, what Labour plans to do if that party comes into office in 2015; schemes that are imposed on people from above will never succeed.

The problem is that the United Kingdom has become an increasingly unequal society, with money and privilege bled out of the majority of the population (who do most of the work for it) and into the hands of a very small number who have power and – it seems – no responsibility at all.

The vast majority of us are seen as disposable commodities by these exploiters – whose number includes a large proportion of MPs with interests in private business; they use us to make their huge profits and then throw us into unemployment.

Is it any wonder that such betrayal breeds families that turn away from the system and take to crime instead?

When David Cameron slithered into Downing Street he said he wanted to “re-balance” society. In fact, he over-balanced it even more in favour of privilege and wealth.

Now we need a proper re-balancing of society. The only way to solve the problem of ‘troubled families’ – a problem said to cost us £9 billion every year, by the way – is for people to be born into a society where everybody is valued and receives a fair (in the dictionary sense of the term, rather than the Conservative Party definition) reward for their contribution.

That will mean a fundamental shift in attitudes that should be taught to everybody from the cradle upwards.

You won’t get it under the Conservatives or any other right-wing government because they are exploiters by definition.

Will you get it under Labour?

Possibly. But a lot of right-wing Blairite dead wood will have to be cleared out first, and Hilary Benn is not the man his father was.

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Three words for the Coalition: Mathematics, mathematics, mathematics!

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Mr Osborne probably couldn’t help him. It’s possible the Coalition’s maths problems have been caused by the fact that a towel-folder is in charge of the economy.

Back in 2010, when he still thought he could win an election fairly, David Cameron mocked Tony Blair’s famous “Education, education, education” speech by saying he could sum up his priorities in three letters: “N-H-S.”

He was, as we have discovered with Mr Cameron, completely wrong. He did need three words after all.

Mr Cameron’s priorities should have been: “Mathematics, mathematics, mathematics.”

Here’s why:

Sticking with the medical theme, it turns out that the government’s figures on the number of new midwives entering the NHS are inaccurate.

Before the general election, according to the BBC website, Mr Cameron promised to increase the number of midwives by 3,000. Despite creating 5,000 training places, however, this has not been translated into jobs and figures from the Royal College of Midwives show the number of midwives in employment has increased by just 145.

Challenged by this on his weekly radio show, Nick Clegg said the government had not deceived anyone but was putting more money into ensuring there are more midwives who are properly qualified to work in the NHS.

Anyone can see that this is not what Mr Cameron promised. Was the government deceiving us? Or was it incompetent and simply got its sums wrong?

Let’s look at another example: The government’s so-called ‘troubled families tsar’, Louise Casey, has admitted its claim that there are 120,000 such families in the UK is inaccurate. “The number came from Labour research on disadvantaged families with multiple and complex needs, rather than families that caused problems,” according to an interview in The Guardian.

In fact, her initiative has been working with 23,000 families and has succeeded with 1,675 – whose children are now attending school regularly and not committing crime, while the adults have found work, triggering a £4,000 bonus for local councils dealing with each of these families.

More disturbing was the claim that, “if we take that 120,000 figure, give it to local authorities, give them the criteria behind troubled families, and they can populate it, which they have done, with real names, real addresses, real people – then I am getting on with the job”.

Hang on! Is she saying that she’ll shoehorn families into her definition of ‘troubled’, whether they qualify or not, just to make up the numbers?

Finally, the BBC revealed today that the Benefit Cap, limiting the amount of state benefit available for British households to £500 per week, will affect far fewer households than originally estimated.

The government said 56,000 households would have their benefits reduced – by an average of £93 per week. This would save £275 million per year. In fact, it now expects only 40,000 to be affected. That’s a drop of nearly 29 per cent – not 25 per cent, as the BBC article, itself, inaccurately states. Perhaps reporter Ross Hawkins got his figures from the government.

This means the saving goes down to around £196,500,000.

The Department for Work and Pensions says the change is because more people are seeking help to get into work, but this won’t wash. If they’re seeking help, they haven’t actually found work.

Could this be another situation like we had recently, when Grant Shapps claimed the number of people claiming ESA had dropped by 878,000 since new assessment criteria came in, only for it to be revealed that this was perfectly normal with such claims, and the people who had dropped off had either got better or found work they could do despite their disability (in other words, they had complied with the terms of the benefit and found a way not to have to claim it), or they had died?

Number-crunchers will be watching these figures carefully.

If we are to draw any conclusion from this, it is that this Coalition government is extremely cavalier about the figures it uses to support its policies.

To summarise: The Coalition cannot be trusted to do its sums properly.

Mathematics, mathematics, mathematics, Mr Cameron. We all guessed you wouldn’t understand its importance when you appointed class dunce Michael Gove as Education Secretary.

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