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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 22 March 2019 to Question 234235 on Families: Disadvantaged, how many children supported by the troubled families programme have subsequently been taken into care.

The Troubled Families Programme is designed to help families with complex needs achieve better outcomes, such as avoiding children being taken into care, by addressing all the underlying problems faced by family members. A single keyworker works with the whole family to agree goals against their problems which can include poor health, drug and alcohol use, domestic abuse, crime, anti-social behaviour, poor school attendance and financial exclusion. When compared to a matched comparison group, the programme was found to have reduced the proportion of children on the programme going into care by a third

However, the safeguarding of children is always the primary concern and there will sometimes be occasions when, despite the support offered to a family, a child has to be taken into care in order to keep them safe. The national evaluation of the Troubled Families Programme shows that approximately 1.7 per cent of children who have been supported by the Troubled Families Programme were in care 19-24 months after they started the programme. Approximately 500,000 children have received support through the Troubled Families Programme, therefore around 8,500 were in care between 19-24 months after the programme began (These figures are estimates and should be treated as indicative only).