Agenda item

The Committee considered a report from the coordinator of Havering’s Troubled Families programme regarding the programme.

The Committee noted that in May 2011 Havering Council and partner agencies agreed to commit resources to the Top 100 Families programme. This arose from the recognition there was a need to improve co-ordination and delivery of services to a number of families in the borough whose complex needs were often not well addressed despite a high level of spending by a number of local agencies.

In October 2011, the Department of Communities and Local Government announced the national Troubled Families Programme, whereby Government funding would be available to local authorities based on the likely prevalence of families with specific characteristics. Troubled Families were defined as households who:

• were involved in crime and anti-social behaviour;
• had children not in school;
• had an adult on out of work benefits, and;
• caused high costs to the public purse.

The Committee was informed that Havering’s Troubled Families Programme was a merger of national and local initiatives. The programme had begun by plotting the areas of deprivation to identify the top 100 families.

The Committee was taken through the process by which the troubled families would be identified. The Government had established national thresholds that included education, crime and anti-social behaviour and work. To these three criteria Havering had added its own local, discretionary criteria. For each criterion, the following was the necessary threshold:

• Education: A child has been permanently excluded; has had 3+ fixed term exclusions in the last 3 terms; is in a PRU or alternative provision or is not on a school roll AND/OR has had 15% or more unauthorised absence in the last 3 terms.

• Crime & ASB: Households with 1 or more under 18 year old with a proven offence in the last year AND/OR households where any member has  1 or more ASB order, injunction or contract, or the family has been subject to a housing-related ASB intervention in the last year.

• Work: If a family meets the ‘Education’ and ‘Crime & ASB’ criteria then a check would be carried out to see if any adult in the family is on DWP out of work benefits.

Members noted that if any family met all three of the above national criteria then they would need to automatically be on the troubled families list.

Havering’s local criterion kicked-in if a family met less than three of the criteria above. Havering could use local discretion to add them to the list. DCLG had advised that Havering could consider children on CP plans, families with frequent police call-outs or arrests or health problems.

Havering received upfront funding of £3,200 per family in the first year, reducing to £2,400 in the second year and £1,600 in the final year. In addition, performance based funding, measured against each of the three national criteria was available, subject to Havering meeting certain performance thresholds. If Havering met these thresholds, then it would receive, per family, £800 in the first year, £1,600 in the second year and £2,400 in the final year.

So far, Havering had identified 170 families, with a further 415 target families. One family had 37 teams of agencies visit them, which demonstrated the importance of streamlining services and the ways in which the Troubled Families programme would tie-in with the MASH.

The benefits of the programme were listed as follows:

·        the alignment of work programmes within the Council;

·        the focus on priority family issues;

·        a renewed impetus to fix operational problems, and;

·        systemic and sustainable change.

The governance of the programme was via an overarching strategic group along with an operational steering group and then the nine separate work strands each reported to the operational steering group. The nine strands were:

·        pilots;

·        ESF programme;

·        outcome and evaluation framework;

·        reinvestment strategy;

·        whole system re-design;

·        commissioning;

·        participation;

·        workforce development, and;

·        communications plan.

The remaining challenges of the project were largely centred on the ESF programme and ensuring partnership buy-in to the project.

The next steps were:

·        TF partnership conference/workshop;

·        develop detail in works strands and identify leads;

·        confirm intervention for Year 1 cohort of families;

·        governance structure and operational group.

The Committee noted the report.