Post-riot family plan has 'worked' for West Midlands

The plan to tackle 120,000 problem families by 2015 was launched by David Cameron in the wake of the riots which saw marauding yobs smashing windows and looting in the streets of Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Birmingham as well as other parts of the country.

A £448 million scheme was set up to try to cut youth crime, get truanting children back into school and help jobless adults into work. But council leaders today said that they would have been doing the work anyway and that the funding was 'almost tokenistic'.

Across the Black Country and Staffordshire, 2,960 'troubled' families were identified by the end of September this year.

A 'troubled family' is one where the authorities say members are involved in youth crime or anti-social behaviour, have children who are excluded from school or regularly truanting, have an adult on out-of-work benefits and cost the public sector large sums in responding to their problems, an estimated average of £75,000 per year.

Of those identified 576 are now classed as having been 'turned around' with children back in school, levels of youth crime and anti-social behaviour reduced and adults in continuous work.

Families were given a single point of contact who would check that children were attending school while making sure the adults in the household were attending appointments to help them find work. Sandwell and Staffordshire have had some of the biggest successes in the West Midlands, with more than a quarter of their identified troubled families considered to be 'turned around'.

Authorities in Walsall have also turned around just over a fifth of its troubled families. Dudley has seen just eight per cent of troubled families turned around while in Wolverhampton it is just over one in 10.

Sandwell Council's finance chief Councillor Steve Eling said: "We would have been doing this anyway. The money offered is almost tokenistic. People are doing this work as part of their day to day job.

"There isn't a group of people employed specifically for this. They are doing it very well anyway."

Roger Lawrence, leader of Wolverhampton City Council, added: "I don't want to criticise the programme. But we could do more if we had had better resources."

More than 20 agencies, including the city council, housing associations, JobCentre Plus, the police, health services and voluntary and community sector organisations, are working with families.

Dudley councillor Tim Crumpton said: "It is not just about figures it is about helping families to get stability that matters.

"We have a very firm commitment here in Dudley borough to work with troubled families with dedicated workers who provide advice on finding employment, ensuring children attend school on a regular basis and, where applicable, challenging anti-social behaviour and crime.

"We also bring in expertise from a range of fields including health, housing, police, probation and job centre plus in a bid to tackle the issues which lead to the problems experienced by these families.

"The number of people we are able to help is also steadily increasing and we are due to submit figures to the government early next year which are expected to show an increase in our turn around figures to around 200."

Nationally, more than 22,000 families have been classed as turned around.