Middle class in Hull urged to ‘adopt’ a jobless family

The initiative, which will be piloted in Hull, Blackpool and Westminster, will see Children and Families Minister Tim Loughton become one of the “family champions”, the Department for Education confirmed.

Other Government Ministers, advisers and MPs are said to have volunteered to take part, including Rohan Silva, one of David Cameron’s senior policy advisers.

However, there appeared to be some confusion in Whitehall over the plan with Employment Minister Chris Grayling – who was also named among the volunteers – saying he was not involved.

“I was rather surprised when I read this one. It was news to me that I was going to be in there,” he said.

“Tim is the Children’s Minister and I know that he wants to lead from the front over this. I am sure he will do an excellent job.”

Shadow Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker dismissed the plan as “gimmicky” and accused Ministers of lacking a proper strategy for dealing with the long-term unemployed. “It smacks of something that gets a headline, but what is going on underneath? What is the strategy?” he said.

Ms Harrison, whose company manages £300m of Government training contracts, denied the scheme was a gimmick.

“Actually standing beside a workless family and saying ‘I will make myself responsible for making this a working family’ is really daunting,” she said.

“The thought scares a lot of politicians because they don’t know how to do it but I have said ‘I’ll show you once and for all how this is done’. And they are very enthusiastic.”

The scheme was cautiously welcomed by some in Hull.

Mike Ross, deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat group at Hull Council, said: “I welcome any attempts to tackle what in many cases is a chronic long-term problem of worklessness with families not only in Hull but across the nation.

“This is a novel way of dealing with it but fundamentally relies on the old idea that if you mentor and inspire other people you can help with their own personal situation.

“Whilst there are no easy solutions to difficult problems, which this is, I would cautiously welcome this effort to tackle what is in many cases a severe problem.”

Ms Harrison, a 48-year-old millionaire businesswoman who chairs A4e (Action for Employment), knows from personal experience how deep-rooted the psyche of unemployment can be. Her father ran a company helping redundant steel workers return to work and A4e was born out of a stint working for the family firm.

She is understood to have put her own money into the pilot schemes where the family champions are being recruited, and pledged to take some of them on herself.

Ms Harrison was appointed Employment Tsar by David Cameron but prefers the title Family Champion.

The scheme is intended to encourage the middle classes to act as mentors to families in which no one has worked over two or three generations.

They would introduce the families to their contacts, help them to manage their household finances and guide them through bureaucracy.

There should be plenty of families suitable for help in Hull, with the city suffering some of the worst rates of unemployment in the country.

Successive governments have grappled with the problem of how to get benefit-dependent families into work.

Mr Loughton, who once mentored a family on a Birmingham council estate for a Channel 4 documentary, said he hoped to be help his “adopted” family in Westminster to live within their means, and apply many of the lessons learned in Birmingham.

He said: “The one thing I found in my tower block is they had no concept of money. They were always in hock. Very basic stuff that you and I take for granted.”