Barnet Council spends £70,000 on resolving chaos

On my weekly trawl through the what Barnet Council are spending your cash on, I stumbled upon a document that tells me they are planning to spend £70,000 resolving chaos. I kid you not.

Here is section 5.2 of the DPR which explains how the cash will be spent

£40,000 funding has been awarded by the Department of Health as part of the ‘Resolving Chaos’ pilot. A further £30,000 has been awarded from One Barnet funding. Project budget forecasting projects this project to be delivered within this £70,000 total budget.

Here is section 8.2 from the DPR

The second phase of Community Coaches will develop from this initial prototype,  building on the results from the first phase. It is also one of the pilots being undertaken by ‘Resolving Chaos’ a social enterprise commissioned by the Department of Health to  test the ‘Chaos Index’ which has been developed to identify families with complex multiple needs who would benefit from early intervention.

Has it not occurred to the people who write such reports that on many occasions it is the policies and spending priorities which cause the chaos in the first place. Have they considered how the closing of childrens centres across the Borough, the withdrawal or cutting of grants to charities and sacking of staff involved in vital community building activities may have affected the "chaos index".

All of this talk about "early intervention" is complete nonsense. What is needed is properly funded services, which are staffed up to deal with problem families and a proper strategy to address the Borough wide issue of poverty and social exclusion.

Here is the whole document,

DPR Resolving Chaos

Or you can find it here on the Council website

http://committeepapers.barnet.gov.uk/democracy/reports/reportdetail.asp?ReportID=11007

I am intrigued that £30,000 comes from the One Barnet project budget. If ever there was anything which deserved a bit of "Chaos resolution" it is this toxic POS project.