Donna Molloy

Troubled Families Team, DCLG

Troubled Families and employability skills

• How helping families move towards employment is being located at the heart of family intervention approaches

• Recent commitments to ensure Jobcentre Plus and Local Authorities work together in a much more integrated and whole-family way.

IMPACT

• Troubled families …

• attract multitude of uncoordinated services – up to 20 different agencies involved with one family

• often have high impact on community

• often large families whose problems affect the life chances of their children

• drain public finances – and these are mostly reactive costs

4

Business as usual for these families = a multitude of

uncoordinated services

4

From2003

…to2012

Police/Community

Safety

A post-it = a contact or intervention

Health Social Care Housing CommunityOutreach

CAFCoordination

AttendanceService

HousingBenefitBarnardos

FamilyIntervention

Project

Note absence of employment related

support ????

A better way of doing things = Family Intervention

1. A dedicated worker dedicated to the family2. Who looks at what’s really happening for the family

as a whole3. And gives practical hands-on support4. With an assertive and challenging approach5. Backed by an agreed plan and common purpose

among the relevant services.

Turning a family around means:

Getting adults into workChildren at schoolCutting crime/ASBCutting costs, saving money

Employment at the heart of the programme

New delivery agreement with JCP

• Ensure that the delivery of welfare to work support is more effectively dovetailed with the support being offered within the Troubled Families Programme;

• Contribute (as appropriate) to family assessments and family plans in order to agree common employment and employability goals with the local authority for troubled family members;

• Adopt a coordinated local approach to working with each troubled family;

• Track the progress of troubled families on the DWP Labour Market System and share this information with the local authority on a regular basis.

Progress to date

• Secondees now in post • Troubled families being flagged on JCP systems • 9 th May first national event bringing secondees and Troubled

Families Coordinators in the top 25 areas• Promising models of joint working emerging