Tony Blair monthly press conference discussing low-income families

Tony Blair monthly press conference discussing low-income families; Tony Blair MP press conference SOT - On idea of generalised social breakdown and single-parent versus dual-parent families / In actual fact, in terms of support for families, we have done an immense amount in the last few years / but truthfully we have not managed in the same way to get to the hardest-to-reach families / and these are small groups of families and individuals that are severely dysfunctional, have multiple problems, have been left behind by the generality of policy / and we now have to try and deal with / On plans for shifts in government policy / My view is that some of these young people / when they're very young you can tell they are going badly off the rails some times at the age of six or seven for example / On need for programmes like Family Intervention Programmes, Nurse-family partnerships, city-wide proposals such as Nottingham's to use the benefits system to tackle social exclusion and incentivise families / On work of voluntary sector / On rights and responsibilities / We're not going to be able to tackle this unless we recognise that these kids and their families need to intervened with at a very early stage and put within a structured and disciplined environment where there's a carrot and stick approach/ so that we're trying to help but we're also imposing obligations on them / I think it is important however, that we start from the correct analysis of the facts / I think the problem that we've got at the moment is that we are misdiagnosing the true state of British society / which is one of immense improvement for many of the poorest families / but with a group of them hard to reach, left behind, that the generality of government policy is not lifting at the moment in the way we want to see / What follows from that diagnosis is obviously a different set of policy prescriptions