The unrest seen in our major cities over the summer has rightly focused attention on how to assess, intervene and persist to help some of the most vulnerable families in our communities.With the Prime Minister pledging to tackle 120,000 problem families before the next election, local authorities should be at the forefront of local solutions to meet this challenge.
Following extensive investment, these families continue to cost the taxpayer almost £100,000 per year.The answer is not more investment; rather it is a smarter, more coordinated approach to public services.
Following the riots, Westminster conducted a consultation event with young people and it was found that they felt the root cause of the problem was family breakdown but also poor parenting, particularly the lack of clear discipline in the home.A family environment was seen to provide a stable, secure and safe haven for young people at risk of entering a gang and engaging in the associated criminal activity.It was also felt by the young people that the initial breakout of violence was caused by a hardcore minority of young people with connections to local gangs.
It is against this backdrop that Westminster’s ‘Your Choice’ programme was bornThe council is taking a clear leadership and co-ordinating role in tackling serious youth violence. Building on the principles of early intervention, information sharing and personal responsibility, this programme allows our young people and their families to make a real choice – to take the services on offer and become upstanding members of our community, or to face a range of enforcement options.
The programme will provide targeted prevention programmes to stop young people from becoming involved in gangs, for example, through early intervention work in schools with year 6 and 7 pupils.It will also provide interventions to divert young people from gangs, through cross-border gang mediation, gang exit support up to the age of 24 and supporting parents in dealing with their children’s involvement in gang activity.By engaging with our young people early, involving the wider family network and offering a clear life choice, this programme will see the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in society turned around.
The programme will build on the excellent work already ongoing across the city, including the Tell it Parents Action Group which has taken root in the north of the city.The group, started by local parents for local parents, aims to unpick some of the problems facing local communities today.It’s strength as a community network lies in a grassroots, on-the-ground, joined-up approach to ensuring parents are part of any solution in maintaining strong and safe communities.With weekly drop-in sessions taking place, the credentials of this project are ones we hope to replicate throughout the Your Choice programme. The motto of the group is ‘it takes a whole community to raise a child’; a motto which the Your Choice programme seeks to echo.
The Your Choice Programme also builds on the proven foundations of Westminster’s Family Recovery Programme (FRP).Established in 2008, the FRP’s success lies in its simplicity.Instead of families being passed from agency to agency or sharing information with practitioner after practitioner, the programme wraps services around those families most in need.The project provides a team around each family for six to 12 months and uses the expertise and intelligence of a range of professionals to assess, intervene and persist to help some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
A family takes many shapes and sizes; yet at its core, children and adults are bound by a domestic relationship, whose actions and inactions impact upon each others’ lives. In most families, these are positive relationships, morally beneficial with strong values instilled by good parenting without intervention .The families at the heart of the Family Recovery Programme are often chaotic.The absence of control and discipline, often coupled with a ‘don’t care’ attitude, blights their own lives as well as their neighbours’, inhibits social mobility and ultimately damages the community.
A key part of the programme is the family’s consent to share information.The Family Information Desk forms a key component of the programme; with different agencies sharing information on particular families so as a clear picture of the family, can their interactions with public services, can be mapped.This in turn means services are delivered in a smarter, more efficient way to meet the needs of the whole family.
With the first cohort of 50 families through the programme, the results speak for themselves.In the first year alone the net costs avoided for these families amount to over £1m, with the cost avoidance per family coming to over £21,000.Through the intervention of the programme the average number of arrests for crime households dropped from 9 to 1.5 a month and anti-social behaviour was reduced by nearly half.This means our streets and communities are safer and our problem families are turning their lives around.
The support of the Family Recovery Programme is not unlimited.Before participating in the programme, families must sign a contract with the council.The agreement sets out the possible sanctions – eviction, parenting orders, care proceedings and other forms of court action – in the event of a repeated failure to engage with the programme. In addition, those who join the ‘Your Choice’ programme will be subjected to possible sanctions if they repeatedly refuse to co-operate in the programme.With real choice comes real consequences and young people who choose to continue to associate with gangs and related offending will be subject to a range of enforcement methods against them, led by the Police and Council working in partnership.
This summer’s unrest has provided ‘rocket fuel’ to the parenting agenda; focusing practitioners and politicians’ minds alike on the importance of the issue.An appropriate, measured and reasoned policy response is needed.By building on the principles of the Family Recovery Programme, Westminster’s Your Choice programme, will offer young people in our communities a way out of crime and into a civil and more responsible society.
