Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what data his Department has that demonstrate the effect of the Troubled Families programme on rates of domestic violence and abuse in (a) England and (b) the Greater Manchester authority area in each year since 2012.

Mr Marcus Jones

Domestic violence was not included in the target outcomes of the first Troubled Families Programme (2012-15). Given this, we did not have a robust national or local measure to assess prevalence of domestic violence families for the first programme.

Domestic abuse has now been included as one of the six key headline problems of the new Troubled Families Programme (2015 – 2020). As part of the evaluation of the new programme, we are collecting data from all local authorities on police recorded incidents of domestic violence. This includes the Greater Manchester authority areas. We are also measuring self-reported domestic abuse through a survey of over 1,000 families using the same measure as the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The evaluation will report, in due course, the changes in these measures once sufficient families have progressed beyond intervention to make a robust assessment.