British Troubled Families Program. A New Approach to Social Assistance and Innovations in Public Administration Practice

The article analyses the Troubled Families рrogram in Great Britain, the reasons and factors that stimulated the program, its strategic goals are to assist each family to change life for better, to cut state budget spending, to start social assistance system reform, to increase the local powers role in public administration. The article describes the approach and criteria and procedures used to determine the families eligible for the program, the mechanism introduced to monitor and control the process and each stage results, how the budget structure and model of financing were changed. Under the program a system of indicators was introduced to monitor performance results: a pay by results model, family workers, cost saving calculator, etc. The program stimulated the development of a full scale information infrastructure that integrated administrative records, all institutions reports on families assistance, from families themselves info, special database to calculate all level budget spending on state services in troubled families and savings due to the program. Data on state budget saving is the most valuable indicator for the program success. The program assisted the local level powers to improve the potential in public administration.The above mentioned approach to troubled families problems, the mechanism to assist them and a tested system of performance indicators; the methods to monitor and control the results might interest scientists and be used in Russia.