Update on Cambridgeshire's response to the national Troubled Families programme and the Family Intervention project

To update Members on progress in implementing service redesign in early intervention family support as part of the Placements Strategy and to provide an update on information emerging from the national Troubled Families Unit (TFU) and to outline Cambridgeshire’s initial response.

Through the Troubled Families Unit (TFU), the Government has identified around £450 million to support local authorities to ‘turn around the lives’ of the 120,000 most troubled families in England by March 2015.
The TFU estimates that in Cambridgeshire there are 805 troubled families, of which 671 are eligible for a payment by results fund at a local level.
There is a tension between the time needed to fully understand the needs of the families who are being identified and the pressure to maximise the opportunity presented by the payment by results. There is a need to build from what is already in place in Cambridgeshire to support families, and recognise that making a difference to this cohort of families is a cross-partnership issue.

To seek views from Overview and Scrutiny on progress to date and next steps in terms of priorities for the work including:
- the extent to which the work should be driven by maximising the payments by results, against working with some of our hardest to engage families?
- issues to consider when thinking about the local criterion for identifying Troubled Families and the most critical question to consider when thinking about the local criteria for identifying Troubled Families