Troubled Families programme expanded

The massive extension of the Troubled Families programme is excellent news. Hitherto the target has been to turn around 120,00 families but this has been increased by another 400,000. An extra £200 million will be spent on this payments by results scheme. But talk of "spending" in this context is misleading. These are families that if they are not truned round cost the taxpayer an average of £75,000 a year - not just for welfare but the army of public sector operatives visiting them.

The money is paid out to local authorities by the Department for Communities and Local Government, but is funded from across Whitehall. The Department for Work and Pensions are concerned that the families get off welfare, the Justice Department that they cease being involved in crime....

The idea is a single dedicated worker helping the family. It is what is known as "joined up Government." But there is great scope for local innovation.

Crucially, all of the public services involved with members of a family are coordinated and the demand on them reduced.

The Government must go much further on public service reform

Cllr Philippa Roe, the Leader of Westminster City Council, says more local incentives and innovation is needed

The government has done much in recent years to drive forward public service reform across areas such as education, welfare and health. Good Conservative local government is also doing its bit as regular readers of these pages will know including my own council and its Tri-borough partners where we have driven through savings, streamlined processes, joined up services and introduced early intervention schemes so that we can deliver better, more efficient and more responsive services to the people we serve.

Local government is also influencing the national reform agenda. The Budget, for instance, highlighted evidence from the Whole Place community budget pilots that will help shape some of the key principles of the spending round - smarter ways of delivering better outcomes for less, putting local knowledge at the heart of Whitehall decision making; and far more emphasis on joint working across the local public sector.

This work at the local level is also being increasingly acknowledged by those in Whitehall. Greg Clark recently wrote here how central government could learn lessons from the reforming zeal of Conservative town halls.

Sorting out the Troubled Families

David Cameron has given a target to local councils that by 2015 they are to have turned round 120,000 Troubled Families. These are families which each cost the taxpayer an estimated average of £75,000 a year. It's not just the welfare bill but the army of public sector operatives constantly meeting them  - the social workers, the police, the housing officers, the education welfare officers and so on. Yet after that spending the children are truant from school, family members take part in crime and anti social behaviour and at least one adult family member is on out-of-work benefits.

Councils will be paid by results for families where the children go back to school, the adults get into work and crime ceases. How councils achieve this will be up to them but the basis will be of dealing the family as a whole - rather than expensive and unconnected contact with individual members.

So far the programme is on course. Progress varies from council to council but overall it is ahead of schedule. Leicestershire County Council has already identified 679 of its 810 families - 170% of those it agreed to in the first year of the programme - and is already actively working with 470.