Families: Troubled Families

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The DCLG, the DWP and other departments across Whitehall are working together in an unprecedented manner on the Troubled Families programme. At local authority level, there is fantastic co-operation between local authorities and the DWP. We now have 152 Jobcentre Plus staff plugged in as part of the Troubled Families programme, directly concerned with securing work for the adults in these families.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, while accepting the value of the Troubled Families programme, does the Minister not accept that it is really important to get in early when working with families at a preventive level, and that hard-pressed social workers in local authorities find it increasingly difficult to do the work that would stop families falling into the sort of chaos that takes them into the Troubled Families programme?