Improving lives for workless families

"A total of £30m has been set aside to boost the life chances of children in disadvantaged families by resolving conflict among parents, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced. The government wants to improve the quality of parental conflict provision across England."

"The money will go towards launching proven parental conflict provision in more local areas and improving the quality of family services already in place."

"Meanwhile, all local areas will be helped to train frontline practitioners in identifying parental conflict and referring families on to appropriate services."

"... An estimated 300,000 workless families are potentially affected by the issue. [There is no measure of the number of working families who are potentially affected by  the same issue and it must be wondered why !]

"The new initiative, set out in the government policy paper Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families... will work alongside the Troubled Families Programme to support local areas across England to improve the effectiveness of their family services..."

"The DWP said it will shortly be launching an opportunity for organisations to bid to deliver evidence-based work to reduce parental conflict in order to increase the supply of quality services available to local commissioners. ` Successful bidders will deliver help face-to-face for workless families using interventions which have been shown to make a difference to the quality of inter-parental relationships, and parents' ability to collaborate,` the policy paper adds." [Jobs for the boys]

http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/2003446/government-launches-gbp30m-bid-to-improve-childrens-life-chances

As for resolving conflict between parents it will go the same way as the Troubled Families Programme: a great deal of opportunity for Social Services involvement and their partnerships, who take children away from their families, and little positive result for children who have been taken away :

"The report saw teams of intensive, low-caseload workers in the best position to help families ‘be converted to a new way of life’, much like being ‘turned around’ today. Despite this support, the report remained sceptical of cost-effectiveness, dwelt on the problems of defining ‘problem` families and the stigmatisation for families labelled as ‘inferior citizens`.."

"Despite numerous impressionistic local evaluations and the expansion of problem family policies across the country, it was only with the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ in the mid-1960s that they fell out of fashion."

"Unproven, anecdotal and written by advocates, ‘problem family’ evaluations are the clear precursor to the policy-based evidence which underpinned the ... Troubled Families Programme."

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-trouble-with-the-troubled-families-programme-repeating-the-failed-attempts-of-the-past/