Problem Families

The Coalition government want local councils to deal with trouble families and will be offering funds as incentive to local councils reduce benefit culture, anti-social behaviour and reduce social services intervention. I agree with all statatory and charities working in partnership to reduce referrals to social services to enable families to be kept together, as it is cheaper in the long term, foster care costs an approximately £500 per week per child. The Big Issue founder informed the government it is cheaper to send a child to Eton Public School, then placing a child into foster care. In my professional opinion (eight years working as an addiction therapist and with vicitims and perpetrators of domestive violence ), the familiy or individual has to recognise they have a problem. This punitive, coercive approach does not work when a person or family has no insight to their behaviour and how it is effecting others around them. To change an entrenched behaviour requires psycho-social interventions to look at genology of the family, educational background, social services past and present involvement, good quality housing and schools with a good pastoral department and an empathic approach to a person circumstance, and all interventions should task centred, and managed within a approriate time frame. Eric Pickles did not mention any of my interventions when discussing this new schmeme to address ASB and how to deal with problem families. My concerns are how these scheme is going to be implemented when statatory agencies have less staff, high case loads, charites are having their funding cut, this scheme would put another strain on these statatory and charitable services. Is the Big Society volunteers going to work with these problem families? Another way of putting it - patonising middle-class women who have the time to volunteer help the needy and poor!!! With no personal or professional experience working with these familes. Poverty doesn't make families or an individual promblemtic, being in poverty offers less choice and social inequality. Everybody has a right to reach their potential, however British society is becoming more polarised and in my opinion this scheme identifies an ever increasing polarised society.