As the Troubled Families Programme prepares to move into its second phase Anne-Marie Pickup, Principal Policy Officer at London Councils, writes about London’s experiences of the programme to date.
London Councils recently published a new report – ‘Troubled Families Programme: Lessons for Future Public Service Reform’. The report explores the experience of the Troubled Families Programme in London and suggests that it offers important lessons for the wider reform of public services.
The Troubled Families Programme was launched by the government in April 2012, when £448 million was committed to turning around the lives of 120,000 families nationwide. The programme has been expanded to work with 400,000 more families between 2015 to 2020. The Troubled Families programme has shown clearly that devolving responsibility and funding for key public services to the local level – where the benefits of integration and personalisation can be realised – can bring services together effectively to both improve outcomes and cut costs. It has benefited from the trust shown in local government to get on and help turn around the lives of some of the families that place the greatest demand on public services.
That being said there is a great deal that can be learnt from the first phase of the programme. Understanding critical success factors as well as the challenges will be crucial both in terms of informing the design and delivery of the expanded programme and for public service reform more generally.
Critical Success Factors
Personalised, ‘wraparound’ interventions – The nature of complex dependency necessitates personalised, intensive interventions that are highly tailored to the recipients’ individual circumstances.
Importance of the Key Worker – The role is pivotal in providing challenge and support to families. They also, however, take a persistent, assertive and challenging approach with families. They are there to get to grips with the family’s problems, and work intensively with them to help change their lives for the better for the long term.
Multi-agency working/co-location – It is the multi-agency approach that allows all aspects of an individual or family’s needs to be taken account of as a whole, and this includes drug and alcohol services as well as housing, children’s and adult’s social care, and mental health services. Having local agencies working together in close proximity also allows them to react nimbly and devise pragmatic solutions or ‘workarounds’ to the barriers they encounter.
Commitment and leadership – Strong local relationships are reinforced by buy in from senior management nationally and locally. Strong local political leadership is also a critical element of success.
Data sharing – Getting the right data sharing arrangement in place is critical for integrated programmes to be successful. In the case of Troubled Families, multi-agency information sharing and analysis, which again includes information from drug and alcohol services, leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the issues in the family thereby informing better care plans and ultimately more positive outcomes.
Challenges
Engaging local partners – In the first phase of the programme, some local partners have been more willing to engage with the programme than others. Moving forward, local areas need to be able to demonstrate and evidence the value and impact of the programme to secure partner buy-in.
Data sharing – some data sets have been easier to incorporate into the programme than others. As the programme expands into new areas such as health it will become even more important that solutions are found which enable appropriate data sharing amongst professionals.
Capacity – Troubled Families teams often tap into mainstream services as part of the engagement with the family. However, the financial pressure facing the public sector risks further disinvestment from key services. Services like drug and alcohol treatment, homelessness provision, community mental health teams, children’s mental health and local housing support are already under pressure, with many of them increasing eligibility thresholds.
Case study:
Father (age 39), Mother (age 35), Daughter (age 10 months). Parents not together but co-parenting daughter.
- Both parents have spent time in custody, and both parents have convictions relating to drugs.
- Mother and daughter living in temporary accommodation with risk of eviction. Risk of social isolation as limited peers and family around.
- Incidence of domestic violence during pregnancy, father engaging with probation as a result.
- Child Protection plan in place for daughter.
- Both mother and father claiming out of work benefits
- Lack of effective communication between parents, respect and boundaries issues.
Support given
A key worker liaised with a social worker, a probation officer, and a health visitor to ensure coherent support was provided. The key worker challenged the family on boundaries, feelings and respect. Practical support around housing was provided, and the key worker supported the mother to engage with victim awareness programmes and the father to engage with probation sessions.
Result
- Both parents have completed domestic violence programmes and the father has no further crime reported.
- Daughter developing well and Child Protection plan reduced
- Mother supported to access ‘Eat Sleep Learn play’ grant in order to gain essential items such as a push chair and cot.
- Father is in full time employment.
- Mother is engaging with regular parent groups and making friends.
- Ongoing housing support as their case is being dealt with in court.
The lessons and success factors drawn out in the report offer a ready template for use in other areas and are particularly suited to tackling complex and long-standing dependency. By delivering the right services and the right interventions at the right time in a family’s journey, local authorities and their partners can start to truly manage ‘complex dependency’ and reduce later service demand.
The programme has shown that this can only be achieved when services are built around the needs of people not agencies. As the case studies in the report demonstrate, it is only when public services work in a coordinated way, that people stop falling through the gaps that the extent and overlapping nature of difficulties are uncovered and entrenched issues are overcome.
The full report, Troubled Families Programme: Lessons for Future Public Service Reform, may be found here
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