A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades down the generations... a small number of these families cost an extraordinary amount of money.
Louise Casey, the 'Troubled Families Tsar' told the Daily Telegraph (20.07.12) 'We are not running some cuddly social workers programme...we should be talking about things like shame and guilt...we have lost the ability to be judgmental because we worry about being seen as nasty to poor people'.
The evidence for long term success in 'turning around the families' is absent and on 12.06.14 Casey told a meeting at Reform 'As hard as it is to accept, the truth is despite our best efforts over many years - and I include myself in that - we just haven't got it right.
The families were also poor and in social housing: 74% of households were workless; 83% received out of work benefits; 27% were in rent arrears; 21% were at risk of eviction.
The statistical characteristics shared by most families were poverty, unemployment, illness and disability and a high welfare cost to the state.
[citation needed] Casey does not believe people undertake behaviours to gain benefits, and that compulsory contraception, whilst reducing the number of children being born into such families, would lead to high-risk teens finding "something else to get into trouble with.
The 120,000 troubled families allegedly cost the state £9 billion per annum according to Cameron, Pickles and Casey at programme start up.
This was a hypothetical number based on assumptions that alleged improvements in behaviour would be sustained and depended on removing the high costs associated with disabled children and chronically sick, unemployed adults (Troubled Families, Green Man Books, 2015, ISBN 978-1514170588).
gentleman made a number of points on how we can demonstrate success and square the £1.2 billion with the £9 billion...this is notoriously difficult because governments of all types are absolutely terrible at measuring outcomes' DCLG published that 99% of the troubled families had been turned around by May 2015, with 132 of the 152 local authorities having turned around 100% of local troubled families and only two having a success rate under 90%.
[13][14] DCLG has published documents to say that the programme saves money for the public sector by preventive action with families who rely heavily on public-sector services.
[20] In June 2013, the UK government announced its intention to extend this intensive help to 400,000 more families, committing £200 million in funding in 2015 to 2016.
The Guardian also noted the scheme had been set up in the wake of the 2011 England riots and was due to cost 1.3 billion pounds by the end of the expanded programme.
[22] The Early Intervention Family called for DCLG to publish the report in full, but the Department replied that the evaluation work was not yet finished.
[23] Writing in the Guardian, Anna Bawden blamed the problems on the use of a payment by results system during a period when local government budgets were being cut and said, "The programme was bound to maximise waste.
"[24] Following the leak, the House of Commons's Public Accounts Committee began an investigation and the National Audit Office was asked to provide an update on how money had been spent on the programme.
[26] A press release from NIESR stated, "we were unable to find consistent evidence that the programme had any significant or systematic impact".
[30] On the date of publication, the Committee tweeted followers to help it review the 765 pages of the Evaluation published late that day before the hearing on 19 October.
[31] In response to the finding of "no significant impact" of the scheme,[26] Dame Casey stated: "They (NIESR) had not, frankly, put any of the caveats in the public domain" and that "they have misrepresented their own research".