The Government has welcomed the progress made by the Troubled Families Programme as a new report shows local authorities and their partners have worked with nearly 300,000 eligible families.
The programme works with families as a whole to provide the stability and practical support they need to overcome complicated issues including ‘worklessness’, uncontrolled debt and truancy.
According to the second Troubled Families annual report, the programme has achieved ‘significant’ progress.
Last year, there were 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.
Out of the almost 14,000 families where progress has been achieved, one or more adults had succeeded in moving into continuous employment — an increase of over 4,800 since last year.
There was also a reduction in demand on children’s social care services.
‘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,’ said local government minister Rishi Sunak.
‘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.’
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.
