As the government pledges to help 120,000 'troubled families' into work, is forced intervention the way to improve parenting and get people into jobs or can a voluntary approach achieve results?
Three years ago Jayne Bradshaw was living with an abusive partner. She struggled to cope with her three children ? the eldest, then 12, was severely autistic, his nine-year-old brother diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the youngest, aged five, was "quite a handful". The washing went undone, rubbish piled up and the children were getting to school later and later.
"I would get up and get the kids out. Don't know what time they got to school. Then I would just crawl back home and get under the covers," says Bradshaw (not her real name). Things did not go unnoticed ? the school alerted social services at Westminster council and weeks later a child protection plan was in place. By October last year Bradshaw came under the wing of the London council's family recovery team, which has been attempting to restore order to chaotic family life in the borough since 2008.
With Bradshaw's consent, her life was opened up to the team, which got the papers detailing her benefits, her children's education, her medical records, social services' records and even police logs. The idea is intense, intrusive monitoring. A month later, she was receiving visits three times a week from social workers and getting support for her depression.
Born in Hertfordshire, Bradshaw's mother and stepfather were alcoholics. She was sexually abused by her mother's partner. "I got myself up for school. Never had breakfast. If I was not getting beaten, I was getting sexually and emotionally abused. Never got help with homework. We had fishfingers and chips every night. Books were my only escape as a child," she recalls.
She left home aged 16. A year later she was pregnant. Over the next decade she had three children, with three different fathers. Now aged 31, she has not worked since having her first son aged 17.
With the help of the family recovery team, Bradshaw was given rudimentary parenting lessons and taught how to keep a house in order. Keeping appointments and the house straight meant that her children did not have to go into care initially.
It was not easy. Two months into the programme, Bradshaw's youngest boy was excluded from school for being disruptive. She was forced to have her parenting examined in detail ? attending a "family intervention" centre where children's services evaluated her mothering skills. "Four mornings a week I was being watched, people telling me what I should or should not be doing. [It was] very stressful," she says.
Relationship breakdown
It all proved too much. Her relationship, never on solid ground, broke up. By March this year her youngest son had left with his father. Weeks later he was in care. This loss marked a turning point for the team and Bradshaw. "I have got a new man and am doing a course in quiltmaking. I want to work. I do want my youngest back. I always think of him. But I could not cope."
For Westminster council, Bradshaw's story is a success. For the coalition government it represents the future ? a model of how to respond to troubled families.
It was the last government that launched "family intervention" projects after Tony Blair's social exclusion unit found that the bottom 2% of society had not benefited from a decade of welfare spending. Some 140,000 families with multiple problems, such as substance abuse, worklessness and poor health, were estimated to be costing society �12bn a year. Children growing up in such families were severely disadvantaged ? perpetuating penury and low achievement. To break the cycle, the Labour government gave local authorities cash to offer a social contract to such families: stay out of trouble, kick drug and drink habits, take parenting lessons and in return keep your house and children. The council's role was to provide the experts and co-ordinate local services.
The coalition has taken this a step further ? and appears ready to force needy parents to work, or at least mandate training. The first inkling that this would be a policy priority was when David Cameron announced last December that there would be cash to get 500 workless families back into employment. A few months later, Downing Street said all troubled families ? now estimated to number 120,000 ? would be helped by 2015. In June, tenders were out for �200m of European Social Fund (ESF) money.
This represents a small fraction of today's cost of working with troubled families. In Westminster's case, the targeted and intensive nature of the recovery team's work costs �19,500 a year per family. The ESF contracts offer private firms half that amount to get problem parents into work for just two years. The tenders will be awarded by the end of the year. Inevitably, more cash will have to be found.
Natasha Bishopp, the head of Westminster's programme, says the scheme is value for money: every �1 spent resulted in �2 in costs avoided. Westminster's track record means it is at the forefront of many government plans to tackle workless households: it already has five "family champions", at a cost of �40,000 a year each, to chivvy and chase families into work. It is also going to bid for social investment bonds where private investors put up the cash to get workless households back into employment and in return, if work is found, take a slice of the savings as a financial "return".
Bishopp says that with council funding being cut, her 25-strong team is considering opting out of local authority control. "You might need a vehicle to deliver the bond and to keep costs down. We are looking at a mutual or a joint venture with an established charity," she says.
As well as Westminster council, expertise in getting troubled households back to work is being provided by a two-year trial run by welfare-to-work charity Tomorrow's People, which has long argued that a job is the first step on the road out of poverty.
Working with 15 families on the Park Wood estate on the south-east fringes of Maidstone, Kent, Tomorrow's People set up a cafe and children's centre. The idea was not, as in Westminster's case, a crisis management plan but more of a surveillance strategy. The charity aims to change people's lives by being invited to be part of them. There is no stick, only a carrot.
The results are startling, given that these are long-term unemployed people. According to Tomorrow's People, half the parents have taken up volunteering positions locally; the rest have started training. The charity says it wants to take the scheme national.
Over a milky tea, Paul Ford says he spent the last three years indoors. He has dyspraxia, associated with problems of perception, language and thought, and adult autism that hadn't been diagnosed, and was living as a virtual recluse. "I couldn't even meet a person's eyes," he says.
The 31-year-old former carpet-fitter, says with Tomorrow's People's encouragement, he has rediscovered his confidence, gained mostly through volunteering at the children's centre. "I would have been high and dry. All I wanted was to get my life back," he says.
Balancing finances
He and his wife Kate are most concerned at the moment about balancing tight finances with three girls ? Jasmine, aged two, Holly, three, and Rosie, 11 ? to feed. Ford, who proudly shows off his card stating "my behaviour may appear strange or threatening" and explaining his medical condition, is taking a course in painting and decorating.
Living on benefits, which work out at about �400 a week, he says, is not what he wants. Juggling the family's �2,500 debt means there is no extra cash for life's luxuries. Ford says he is tired of politicians lamenting poor people's supposed bad attitudes or their insufficient drive ? and instead points out that too many low-paying jobs leave people nearly as poor as they had been on welfare.
"Look, I know the politicians talk about troubled families. But we just want good jobs like everyone else," he says. "I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that having no job is a life. It's not."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/20/families-get-tough-life-lessons
David Beckham Peter Atherton Psychology Steve Coogan Luis Moreno-Ocampo Savings
No comments:
Post a Comment