Brighton and Hove social workers praised for work with troubled families

Social workers in Brighton and Hove have been praised for their work with troubled families.

Dedicated teams are working closely with hundreds of families in which the parent or parents are out of work or on benefits and children truant or are excluded from school.

In some of the families being targeted at least one of the children or adults has a record of criminal or anti-social behaviour.

Their behaviour may be exacerbated by drink, drugs or mental health problems.

Besides the problems themselves for those families, their neighbours, teachers, classmates and criminal victims, they cost the taxpayer huge sums of money.

Almost three years ago the coalition government devised the Troubled Families programme offering payment by results for “turning around” troubled families.

The programme required what was described as intensive intervention by social workers on the premise that prevention is better than cure.

The government said that the programme was working and performance statistics indicate that social workers employed by Brighton and Hove City Council are outperforming their colleagues across the south east.

The programme is known as Stronger Families, Stronger Communities in Brighton and Hove and the social workers involved tend to refer to struggling families.

Councillor Sue Shanks, who chairs the council’s Children and Young People Committee, said: “We’re working with families that face multiple problems that could ultimately lead to a huge cost to the public purse and wasted lives.

“Whether those issues are around parents needing support, children being excluded from school, mental illness as well as alcohol or drug abuse, these are all issues that can cause families real problems.

“In some cases these underlying problems can lead to anti-social behaviour that wrecks communities.

“Our Stronger Families, Stronger Communities workers are out there working hard with these families on the frontline and doing practical things like organising guitar lessons for a families’ child.

“This is outstanding work with partners that’s getting positive results working with some of the city’s most hard-pressed families and preventing anti-social behaviour being recycled from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.”

Government figures indicated that out of 675 families eligible for the programme in Brighton and Hove, 417 have been “turned around” as at the end of August 2014.

That is the highest rate in the south east where 11,000 families are being targeted across the region and 6,229 are reported to have been “turned around”.

The phrase turned around is used to indicate that key measures – such as regular truanting from school – have been resolved.

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