New fund to support vulnerable families Friday, July 1, 2011 - 16:21

Thursday 30 June saw the launch of a new Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) / European Social Fund (ESF) fund, at the Welfare to Work Convention in London. It was attended by NIACE's lead on learning and families, Mandy Thomas, who comments on the new fund:

The new fund - European Social Fund: support for families with multiple problems 2011-13 - aims to help families with multiple needs on the road to employment. Running in parallel with the DWP Work Programme, it will fund providers to work with whole families and will measure and reward progress outcomes, rather than solely employment outcomes.

There's one potential drawback - the fund is only available for those organisations that are already accepted on the DWP's framework. While voluntary sector organisations can and must be included as partners and sub-contractors, and local authorities have a key role in identifying families and working alongside the new programme, the prime contractors will, on the whole, be large commercial companies. NIACE feels that there is a potential opportunity here.

The companies who will be bidding for and delivering these programmes will bring a lot of skills and expertise to the delivery of this fund, however they may have little or no experience of working with a whole-family approach. Organisations are being asked to identify the progress outcomes and measurement methodology themselves, something which will be a steep learning curve for some of them.

Local authority and voluntary sector providers on the other hand, have been working with a whole-family approach for years. Through the Family Learning Impact Programme they have worked with and engaged the most disadvantaged families, helping them on the road to employment, further learning, community involvement and strengthened families; as well as building confidence, raising aspirations and enabling adults to support their children's learning.

NIACE urges the DWP and those bidding for this fund, to recognise, include and involve: to recognise that research has consistently shown the positive impact that raising the confidence and skills of adults has on children, and that by placing learning at the heart of a family, both adults and children are better placed to succeed; to include a family learning approach within programmes; and to involve the expertise of those providers who have developed and improved this approach over decades.

We all want to help vulnerable families to improve their life chances and opportunities and this fund is a great opportunity to do so. To ensure it reaches the families who need it most and has the desired outcomes, we need to make sure that those who know best about working with vulnerable families and those furthest away from the workplace, are involved throughout the process.