INNOVATIVE NEW HELP TO TACKLE ‘NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL’ IN THE SOUTH WEST
April 11 2007
Local communities in Bournemouth, Bristol, Exeter, Gloucester and Plymouth who are plagued by significant anti-social behaviour from a small number of the country’s most badly behaved families will today be given a helping hand as the Government delivers on its promise to establish a network of 53 Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) that will troubleshoot around 1,500 families a year across England.
Currently, problem families can disrupt the quality of life of whole communities and make the lives of residents around them miserable. They also put themselves at risk of losing their home, their children at risk of being taken into care if it’s in their best interest or having enforcement action such as anti-social behaviour orders taken against them.
Family Intervention Projects work hard with families to stop this happening by challenging and helping them to change their behaviour.
These families have and create multiple problems and the way public services intervene currently is not always the most effective. For example the cost to the taxpayer can be between £250,000 and £350,000* per family per year for a range of interventions by public services including social, children’s and housing services, policing, court services, criminal justice agencies and others. Family Intervention Projects provide a single key worker to ‘grip’ the family and challenge the root causes of their behaviour by giving intensive support but sanctions if rules are broken.
Louise Casey, the Government’s coordinator for Respect said:
"I am delighted that today we can announce that there are fifty three Family Intervention Projects across the country to work with the most difficult and anti-social families. These families can cause untold misery to those who have to live alongside them and destroy entire neighbourhoods with their frightening and disruptive behaviour.
"These projects in Bournemouth, Bristol, Exeter, Gloucester and Plymouth, a flagship part of the Respect Programme, grip families and use enforcement action and intensive help, and are proven to turn families around. These are families that in the past may have been written off by agencies as ‘lost causes’ - but now will be offered the right help and incentive to become decent members of their community and give their children the opportunity to grow up with a chance in life."
Family Intervention Projects, a key commitment in the Respect Action Plan launched last year, offer impressive results. For more than 85 per cent of families, complaints about anti-social behaviour ceased or reduced and in 92 per cent of cases the risk to local communities was assessed as having either reduced or ceased completely by the time the families completed the programmes*.
Clare Tickell, NCH Chief Executive said:
"Families who are behaving anti-socially often have incredibly complex problems, problems that can have a ripple effect on an entire community. It makes sense that if you help the families, you’ll help the community.
"Getting to the root of the problem can change behaviour forever - not only giving children in these families better health, education and well being but improving the lives of the whole community."
Different levels of intervention may be used at different times as circumstances and behaviour changes. At the most intensive level families who require supervision and support on a 24-hour basis stay in a residential unit.
The Department for Education and Skills are providing funding to train up to 1000 project workers to deliver parenting programmes and one-to-one support in Family Intervention Projects.
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