Holistic support for families engaged in antisocial behaviour

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The context

We don’t know how many families become homeless due to involvement in serious antisocial behaviour (ASB) each year in Scotland. Homelessness reason is not disaggregated by household type in national statistics. Nor is eviction on ASB grounds disaggregated, unlike arrears. We do know social housing evictions for ASB, in contrast to evictions for rent arrears, are rare - making up 4% of social housing evictions in 2019-20 (79, compared to 1,759 for arrears).

Yet it’s clear ASB doesn’t just impact the housing stability of perpetrators; it also contributes to homelessness more widely. For families engaged in ASB, the harms and costs for children and statutory services are high. There’s potential for family breakdown and sustained interaction with child protection, care and criminal justice, as well as homelessness, systems – for both parents and their children, once adults. This makes focusing on and investing in tenancy sustainment for such families hugely worthwhile.

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The intervention

The Family Intervention and Prevention Project (FIPP) launched in South-East Wales in 2010, with a remit to engage families displaying serious ASB. Its dual aims centred on preventing homelessness and preventing children being accommodated by the authority. FIPP was initially funded by Charter Housing (now Pobl Group). It’s now commissioned in three local authorities through the Welsh Housing Support Grant.

FIPP offers intensive, holistic support to families in crisis living in all tenures; the majority of families are social or private tenants. FIPP accepts referrals from any agency, with most coming from landlords, social work, police and health visitors. Between 80-90% of families have social work involvement; many have child protection concerns. Truancy, interaction with the criminal justice system, substance misuse, home condition problems and domestic abuse are all common.

FIPP workers are not statutory. They work on what each family sees as their main worries or goals, not necessarily what the referrer defined. They work with every parent and every child in a family, taking a coordinating role with other services. Workers use a trauma-informed approach and are trained to carry out the Freedom Programme (for women who have experienced abusive relationships), parenting programmes and child therapy. FIPP has a flexible budget, small caseloads and work with families as long as needed – years in some cases.

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The outcome

In over a decade, FIPP has rarely encountered a family who won’t engage with their service. Between 2010-20, FIPP worked with 300 families and achieved a 100% tenancy sustainment rate. This includes managed moves, but reflects the fact no family was evicted, or entered the homelessness system, once FIPP became involved. 97% of families remained together, with only 3% having children accommodated.

A 2013 evaluation found, by preventing family evictions, FIPP made savings for housing and homelessness agencies, but also brought about reduced interventions from police, youth offending, court and social work services. Neighbour complaints, truancy and debt all decreased for families supported. FIPP was assessed as highly cost effective, generating total public sector savings of £1.17 million in its initial three years.

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Key insights

• providing person-centred support to families facing the largest challenges is costly, but the costs of not doing so – to the families themselves, to social work, police, housing and others - are far greater
• working alongside families to achieve what they, rather than professionals, define as success, increases engagement, motivation and outcomes
• the right staff and working conditions matter: FIPP’s small, skilled, well-supported team have diverse professional backgrounds, check in with each other daily and the service has very low staff turnover

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Find out more…

Karen Barnes, Area Manager, Pobl Group
karen.barnes2@poblgroup.co.uk