Last updated at 2:00 PM on 19th October 2011
Taxpayers spent 200,000 on just one family as they caused 250 call-outs from police, social services and ambulance crews in a single year.
The family, from an estate in Greater Manchester, has been compared to the trouble-making Gallagher brood from TV's Shameless.
The huge workload generated by the single mother and her four children includes 58 police call-outs and five arrests.
Life imitating art: The family is reminiscent of Shameless' terrible Gallaghers
They also had to make five visits to A&E for overdoses, stabbing, self-harm and assault.
And the family's awful behaviour brought two housing injunctions, aimed at nuisance tenants, as well as summons for non-payment of council tax.
A police source said that the family, from Little Hulton in Salford, was one of several in Manchester which have proved 'a huge drain on police resources'.
The case has been highlighted by the Government after ministers praised Salford council for successfully reducing the 200,000 cost of the family by over two-thirds by helping them deal with debt and alcohol-related problems, and reducing their dependency on the state.
Home: the family has terrorised the area of Little Hulton in Salford
The police source said: 'In the past, they have been dealt with in a piecemeal fashion but now the idea is to deal with them holistically and get more agencies around the table working together.'
Local public services chiefs have trialled a more integrated approach to dealing with problem families after Greater Manchester was named as one of 16 pilot areas for Community Budgets last year.
The turnaround in Salford involved a social worker co-ordinating help from all the agencies involved to stabilise the household, dealing with the family as a whole rather than individual members.
Salford council leader John Merry said: 'This family has a number of different issues relating to them and has been involved with police, the health authority, social workers.
'We've tried to fix those problems by coming up with a series of solutions, getting people back into work, getting people to attend school and saving money from the public purse at the same time.'
Nationally, ministers want to target 120,000 of the most troubled families - less than one per cent of the population - who represent an 8bn strain on the economy every year and can be involved with up to 20 different agencies.
Announcing an expansion of the scheme on Monday, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said the type of families who needed targeting were the same people who had been involved in this summer's riots.
He said: 'It's a story of futility and waste. Waste of money. Waste of people. And it has simply got to stop. We are going to stop it.
'We can no longer afford the luxury of fruitless, uncoordinated investment.'
Jolly good work by the Social Workers.
- David, Slough, 19/10/2011 17:04
Report abuse