vallierojas: 'Problem families' do not need an army of Hyacinth Buckets shouting at them

Will those in the Working Families Everywhere scheme just feel more failed after the middle class day-trippers leave?

There is a new government initiative dedicated to summoning paradise out of chaos. I speak of Working Families Everywhere, a pilot project in which unqualified volunteers will enter the homes of 100,000 "problem" families to "inspire" them into work by their example. This conjures the image of workshy beasts lying in piles of Pringles and crack, waiting to be shouted at by Hyacinth Bucket, on top of the rest of their woes. This is not the big society where people plant daisies on roundabouts. This is something dangerous.

It began in December when the prime minister said: "All evidence suggests that it's no use offering a range of different services to these families ? the help they're offered just falls through the cracks of their chaotic lifestyles. What works is focused, personalised support." This fits neatly into Cameron's big society narrative ? cut government funding, let amateurs fill the gap, and clap yourself as social deprivation segues into riot. The government has already slashed Connexions, the catch-all advice centre for 13- to 19-year-olds, and abolished the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the Future Jobs Fund, which existed to find jobs for the young. The careers advice service for school-leavers, meanwhile, is now only a memory ? and a website. But no matter ? an army of Emma Harrisons is waiting.

Emma Harrison is the founder of Action for Employment (A4E), and she is establishing Working Families Everywhere on Cameron's behalf. You may know her from Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire, where she gave �50,000 away in front of a TV camera in 2007, after the poor had proved their worthiness for her bounty. The scheme is being piloted in Hull, Blackpool and Kensington & Chelsea, and will roll out in the next four years. Volunteers with no prior experience of social work, creepily renamed "family champions" (FCs), will enter "never-worked" families with drug, crime and child protection issues, and turn them into "working" families. Once polished, these families will inspire others, like a game of Social Democratic dominoes, but backwards. "Family champions are going to stalk the streets, they are going to find the jobs," says Harrison, who is clearly, like Margaret Thatcher, a Nietzschean. They will get a small wage and priority access to all other services the family is using, and they will be handpicked by Harrison. They may also get badges, but this is not confirmed.

Why does this feel so dodgy? I called Harrison's PR and asked her what will happen if there are no jobs. What then? "Emma believes there are jobs," she replied. "There are hidden jobs." Oh yes, those hidden jobs, buried under trees and lying at the end of rainbows. All the unemployed need is the imagination to see the invisible, and maybe a magic shovel and a friendly elf to hug them on the way to Mordor. So a slab of government policy is being handed to a woman who is in denial about the scale and cause of joblessness. The statistics are nowhere in the Working Families Everywhere material. There are 2.49 million people unemployed today in the UK.

Is she also in denial about the task before her? The political narrative, fuelled by drooling newspaper stories about fake wheelchair users claiming benefits and using the money to buy PlayStations, is about the evils of a "feral underclass" who have "broken" Britain. It is a comforting narrative and eases the current squeeze on the disabled, the jobless (now being asked to work for �2.25 an hour, also in the name of "volunteering"), children in poverty and the rest. It is also there in the punishing language of the Working Families Everywhere material. "So much time and money is being spent in order to direct these families in how they should be living their lives," says Harrison's website, "isn't it time we asked them if they could help us?"

It goes on: "Currently up to 20 local agencies can support the same family, each with their own funding, rules and regulations." I can see the logistical problems in this, of course, but will turning decision-making over to unqualified volunteers solve anything, or just add to the chaos? These are serious issues; are they really for amateurs to solve? What will they bring to the crisis but their amateurism? It seems that the government is saying professional social work has failed us, and it is time for voluntary (and cheap) solutions that trivialise both the issues and the expertise of the professionals seeking to solve them. "They [FCs] aren't experts and stuff like that," says Harrison. (Stuff like that?) "But what they are really good at is saying: 'These families need to move forward.'" We can all do that. We can all stand in the street and say we need to move forward. It's a basic skill.

Harrison seems convinced that volunteers will go where professionals cannot, because these families, she believes, do not trust professionals. This is also an argument for sending in a dog: everyone trusts dogs. And how will it work? Social workers survive because they have professional detachment. How will the dynamic between the government-sponsored "friend" and the "problem" families play out? Will there be dramas of betrayal and abandonment, leaving the family feeling more failed, after they've waved off the middle-class day-trippers? And how will the social workers, doing a difficult job for an unexciting wage, feel about this intervention of the army of Emmas? Will it energise or insult them? I did a ring-round yesterday. "You have to be realistic about time-scales and results," said one. "It is taking the fucking piss," said another.

Could it be a precursor to yet more of the same? I would wager yes, and it all reminds me of the university students who wander round the West Bank trying to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and then get shot. This too is a war zone, and one where family champions should be wary of going, even in a Cath Kidston flak jacket and with the noblest of intentions. I don't doubt the good instincts of some of the family champions, but kind hearts are no substitute for coronets, or in this instance, properly funded policies, fair taxation, an education system that works and jobs worth the name.

At the end of the day, this smells like another small-state fantasy, where justice (or even a decent job) is no longer the right of every citizen, but a gift delivered ? easily given, easily taken away. Charity is no substitute for a functioning state. Expect family champions to weep as, for the first time in their lives, they smash up against a reality that won't magically shift before them. It will, I suspect, be more of an education for them than for the unemployed they are waiting so grievously to patronise. Otherwise, it's another strange distraction, like a gentle hum, as the inequalities harden and the curtain falls on the welfare state.

Tanya Gold

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