BRADFORD Council says it is confident it can reach its targets for helping troubled families in the district despite being 20 per cent behind each month.

The council also claimed it had no intention ‘massage’ figures of the families it helped when there may be relapses in the programme.

Figures recently released showed that phase two of Families First, a government scheme introduced to ‘turn around’ the lives 120,000 of the country’s most troubled families and, therefore, reduce cost to the public purse, is not being met by Bradford, members of the corporate overview and scrutiny committee heard.

Jim Hopkinson, deputy director of Children’s Services told members that Bradford’s target was to identify and help 5,990 families by 2020. The council would be paid £1,000 for each family identified and a further £800 after successful intervention, such as getting children back into school, reducing anti-social behaviour and crime and encouraging adults into work.

He said early intervention teams which form a mentoring programme, and which they were currently building on, would make up the current deficit by helping identify the families. A pilot scheme is currently running in BD5 and Keighley.

“At the moment we are behind our trajectory, reaching around 81 families per month instead of an expected 100 to 105 which is approximately 20 per cent.

“But we are sure that when early intervention teams are established we will be able to cope with the numbers,” he said.

“The scheme is worth over £10 million to the council over five years but it depends on families being identified. The criteria is different for phase two because the government will have expected us to have dealt with the most difficult families first.

Councillor David Ward (Lib Dem, Bolton and Undercliffe) asked about potential ‘regression’ of the families helped.

Mr Hopkinson said contact would continue with the families.

“We have no interest in this local authority in ‘cooking the books’ because we want sustainable families. The majority want us to help them. There is only a small percentage who don’t want help.”

Councillor Mike Pollard (Cons, Baildon) asked if there were any figures showing families that had refused engagement, however, no figures were available at this time.