The claim
“This will often be basic, practical things that are the building blocks of an orderly home and a responsible life. These things don’t always cost a lot but they make all the difference.”
Prime Minister David Cameron, 15 December 2011
The background
David Cameron has vowed to pull “Britain’s underclass” back from the brink after this summer’s riots, pledging £448m to help local authorities turn around the lives of 120,000 of the country’s most troubled families.
But here’s the catch – the £448m is only 40 per cent of the money that the government estimates local authorities need.
This means that the government believes this crusade will cost £1.12bn in total.
At a time when local authorities are cutting services to scale back their spending, FactCheck wonders where councils will pluck the remaining £672m from.
The analysis
Department for Education (DfE) figures show that in England, just under 9,000 families have had support from family intervention in the last 5 years – so if that pattern is repeated over the next few years, only around 22,000 families would receive help by the next election.
As Nottingham North’s Labour MP Graham Allen told us previously, it took four years of “back-breaking, ball-aching” just to get 50 families onto their project.
And as for sorting 120,000 families within this parliament, Mr Allen’s advice was to “move a decimal point, and aim to do 12,000”.
Make no mistake, Mr Cameron’s crusade is ambitious.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) told us that the total £1.12bn cost of “turning around” Britain’s problem families was based on cross-department estimates.
Yet, as FactCheck has previously discovered, the DfE’s own estimates put the cost at £14,000 per family – which works out at £1.6bn for 120,000 families.
So that’s already half a billion pounds more than the government is budgeting for – signalling they may have underestimated the cost.
The DCLG told us today that the “precise funding mechanisms are still to be determined”.
But this much we do know: it is payment on performance, and it will be spread out over the next three years.
Crucially, it won’t be ring fenced.
A spokesman for the DCLG told FactCheck: “This spending will not be ring-fenced. The majority of it will be payable only when local authorities and their partners achieve success with families.”
So it’s no money upfront, it’s a giant carrot for the local authorities to spend their money on difficult households.
As for the 60 per cent to be funded by local governments – it’s already in the system, according to the DCLG.
There’s no specific funding stream for troubled families – instead, a number of services that help families have been lumped together under the new Early Intervention Grant (EIG) – for mental health, crime, pregnancy and other youth and children’s schemes – including Sure Start.
Further family schemes are to be found under the Department for Work and Pension’s ESF Programme.
But as the DfE has told us before, Early Intervention Grant “is not ring-fenced, nor subject to conditions, and local authorities are free to decide locally their priorities for its use”.
This year, the EIG has been cut by 11 per cent. So already, councils are facing tough choices about where to allocate their money – and services such as Sure Start have suffered.
The verdict
Intensive help to keep problem families doesn’t come cheap. It’s not a matter of popping in on families every now and then, it means for example, helping parents get their children up and off to school in the morning, helping them with the weekly shop and much more.
But it does make a difference. A government study showed that almost half the families involved in 27 projects showed significant improvement.
And in the long run, as Mr Cameron said today, it saves vast amounts for the taxpayer. Action for Children estimates that working with a family – keeping them out of the courts and care homes – can save the taxpayer more than £80,000 a year – per family.
Now, Mr Cameron is waving £448m in front of local authorities as an incentive to sort out the problem families of the parish.
But as the Department for Education’s figures show, he may have underestimated the total cost to the tune of half a billion pounds.
Plus, without ring fencing the money, or providing more detail around its distribution, the questions that remains is – what other local services will suffer?
By Emma Thelwell
