Programmes to help families facing multiple challenges : Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions

Two government programmes introduced to help families with multiple challenges, such as unemployment, antisocial behaviour and truancy, are already having an impact.

One programme, Troubled Families, was introduced by the Department for Communities and Local Government to 'turn around' in three years the lives of 120,000 families estimated as facing multiple problems; the other, Families with Multiple Problems, by the Department for Work and Pensions to move 22 per cent of people in families with multiple problems towards employment within three years. Both seek to join up the work of local service providers and both have elements of payment by results.

The estimated cost to the taxpayer of providing additional services to the 120,000 families is currently some GBP9 billion a year. And, while it is too early to assess value for money there is evidence that families are beginning to benefit.

However, there is a risk that the expectations for the programmes will not be achieved. While local authorities in England have, by the DCLG's definition, turned around 22,000 families to date, local authorities have attached only 62,000 families to the programme, 13 per cent below the number of families that might reasonably have been attached.

The departments expected that local authorities would refer families to the DWP scheme; however, referrals have been low and the programme is operating with only 26 per cent of its expected volume of attachments. The DWP programme has achieved only 720 employment outcomes, just four per cent of its target and no provider met the Department's target for this measure