Breaking the chain of bad behaviour (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Breaking the chain of bad behaviour

8:54am Tuesday 12th June 2012 in Our View By Telegraph & Argus

The fact that it is the same families who are still at the heart of the anti-social problems in Bradford after 25 years – problems which are estimated to cost the public purse in the district a staggering £132m a year – show that efforts to tackle this issue have so far met with limited success.

But a new initiative using up to £15m of Bradford Council and central Government cash at least shows a willingness to confront the issue of trouble-causing families head-on.

With these so-called problem households costing the taxpayer around £75,000 per year in terms of various issues including child protection, crime, anti-social behaviour and other public purse costs, the fact that Bradford is estimated to have 1,760 such households shows the true scale of the impact this issue is having.

The new family intervention scheme, to be led by Bradford Council but working across all local organisations, is a results-based programme that has already seen some success in pilot schemes.

Hopefully, this can help end the cycle of deprivation that affects many of these families and help them to break the bad behaviour chain that currently seems to be transferred from generation to generation.

A lot of these families are known to different agencies and hopefully the new scheme will help these organisations work closer together to identify not just the problem households but to tackle the causes of these problems.

That way, we will hopefully see real inroads made into the blight of anti-social behaviour on our communities and the incredible drain it places on the resources of our society in economic and social terms.