Letters | 27 August 2011

Family problems

Sir: One can’t help but admire Iain Duncan Smith’s determination to rethink conventional ideas on social policy (‘Gang War’, 20 August). However, it’s not clear what action he has in store for the ‘120,000 families who cause the greatest problems’.

The Family Intervention Project that he inherited from New Labour is, if the Department for Education website is to be believed, still in place — despite rather meagre evidence for its efficacy. Originally it was touted as a measure to move problem families into secure housing where their behaviour could be closely monitored. Yet when we examined this programme last year, we found that nearly all the scheme’s participants remained in the same housing. In any case, families could not be moved against their will.

The Family Intervention Project is emblematic of everything that is wrong with social policy provision in Britain. It is eye-wateringly complex, involving two government departments, 11 quangos, and countless agencies and charities in each local authority where it operates. It operates in parallel with existing provision, and it is impossible to even guess how much time is wasted in ‘inter-agency collaboration’. The principle of ‘integrated delivery’ ensures that responsibility is diluted to the vanishing point. When we contacted the quangos involved, we often had trouble finding anyone who even knew their organisation was involved in the project.

We concluded that New Labour’s entire ‘Think Family’ project — which included the training of ‘Expert Parenting Advisers’ — was little more than a job-creation scheme. Only an incurable optimist would think that a few hastily trained social workers could solve the problems of families that have never had to take responsibility for themselves.

Tom Burkard
Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies, London SW1



How lunacy takes hold

Sir: Your correspondent Allan Massie (20 August) clearly needs to read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by W.A.