Troubled Families Programme

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Baroness raises a very important point. Indeed, in raising that issue she has both great experience and has done an incredible amount of work in the area of women’s rehabilitation, particularly women offenders, and I pay tribute to that. She has raised an important point about the need to work together and to ensure that the women’s groups work at a local level. On a slightly different matter, before coming to the House, I met a women’s group dealing with domestic violence and identifying those issues. I talked about extending the programme to 400,000. One of the defining criteria now will be looking at domestic violence to ensure that those who are impacted are assessed and, most importantly, helped and brought back so they can be proud of their own contribution and the contributions of their families to society as a whole.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Is there not a chance that we would have fewer troubled families if there was a greater emphasis on citizenship education in our schools?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As ever, my noble friend raises an important and pertinent point. Of course, I agree totally, but citizenship alone cannot turn everything around. Unfortunately, we have identified families up and down the country who need such intervention in education, employment, health. Together with that, they will want to serve as proud citizens, and citizenship classes are important in that.