Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2017 to Question HL3576, what steps his Department is taking to strengthen families.

This Government wants to fix the broken housing market to help more ordinary working families buy an affordable home and to give people the security they need to be able to plan for the future. Fundamentally, this means building many more houses in the places that people want to live and getting a fairer deal for renters.

At the heart of this Government's policy on housing is our commitment to help hard working families who are just about managing to get by, and to ensure that the housing market is fairer for those who don't own their own home.

My Department also oversees the Troubled Families Programme which supports early intervention to prevent family breakdown. We work closely with other Government departments to help families overcome their challenges and stabilise their lives, for example, our joint work with Department for Work and Pensions on the Improving Lives agenda.

The programme supports families with multiple problems, including for example those affected by domestic abuse, parental conflict, drug, alcohol or mental health problems, and where children are in need of help. Family keyworkers take a whole family integrated approach across multiple services and provide a co-ordinated package of support. Together this approach can lead to greater family stability and help prevent the need for children to enter care. We have committed £920 million to the programme from 2015 – 2020.