Family Champions - more confusion

The Children and Young People Now website has an article on Emma Harrison's Family Champions scheme which makes the whole picture even more confusing. It's supposed to consist mainly of volunteers. But the pilot areas are not keen. Westminster doesn't want any volunteers, costing time and money to train. Hull won't make a decision for at least 6 months. Shepway is similarly holding back. And these are the areas which already have paid "family champions" in place. The article doesn't mention the private contractors with the ESF money who will be doing a similar job. So much for David Cameron's "plan to transform the lives of England’s 120,000 most troubled families by 2015." It seems unlikely that there'll be that army of volunteers, of "Emmas" as it was originally put. Big society stuff.

And where did that figure of 120,000 families come from? Any round number is suspicious, and that one was just plucked out of the air. Certainly there are a lot of very troubled families, but they are best dealt with by the existing charities working with local authorities.