Housing group’s care arm commends government scheme but questions details

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Central Government and also in Communities

A housing group’s care arm has commended the Government’s ‘troubled families’ programme, but has questioned the details.

Bromford Support, which incorporates the brands Bromford Living, Bromford Support and Bromford Homes, is pleased that the Government is putting £450m into the programme but is concerned about the that 120,000 families which are singled out for menace and heeds caution as to how the programme will be implemented.

The Government is claiming that 120,000 families cost the taxpayer £9bn a year and are the source of anti-social behaviour and crime. David Cameron has said that, “some in the press might call them ‘neighbours from hell’”, and Eric Pickles claims that the families are “troubling themselves [and] they’re troubling their neighbourhoods.”

However, Bromford Support claims that far from using up lots of expensive public service, troubled families have often been let down by public services and are now distrustful of them.

John Wade, Bromford Support managing director, said: “We support around 9,000 vulnerable people a year. Our experience is that they often have lots of issues to deal with – poverty, child abuse, failed education, mental health needs, homelessness, debt and so on but that it is far more likely that they are the ones who will be living with the consequences of these factors and suffer in silence.”

Bromford Support welcomes any new money that helps join services up, eliminates waste and focuses on delivering lasting valued outcomes for people, but is also concerned that the money will be paid out based on performance indicators that bear little relation to the seven criteria used to identify the 120,000 families.

The 120,000 figure comes from research done in 2004 as part of the Family and Children survey. 2% of families surveyed were found to have five or more of a list of characteristics and so were deemed to be ‘multiply disadvantaged’, i.e. no parent in the family in work; family living in overcrowded housing; no parent with any qualifications; mother with mental health problems; at least one parent with a long-standing limiting illness, disability or infirmity; family has low income (below 60% of median income) or family cannot afford a number of food or clothing items.