But whatever it labels the problem, it's always inextricably linked with everything else. How do you get money out of what isn't working, into what does? The trouble is, the Treasury can't count the future money saved. That's why it will take prime ministerial muscle to decree, say, that family centres that are proven to work will be funded jointly out of all those budgets, by hook or by crook.And family centres are just one example In every other field it's the same story. If they don't, these families will cost social services, schools, police, prisons and the NHS a vast fortune in future years. All these government departments have a strong interest in helping calamitous families at the earliest stage. Like all charities, it isn't willing to fund what local authorities themselves should do: its role is to offer added value.

Partnerships everywhere are breaking down.What can the Social Exclusion Unit do? Knock heads together. Other children's charities running family centres dealing with the same problems are also closing. NCH Action for Children has lost its funding from Hammersmith and Fulham for its Askham Family Centre, and three others in Oxfordshire I could list plenty more. Save the Children is now withdrawing its family centres, partly because local authorities were withdrawing money. As a result, Tower Hamlets council, looking for pounds 6m cuts, is seizing the opportunity to withdraw its half of the money. No one wants to make the cuts - but it's not a statutory service so it's the first to go.

Newpin in Sheffield and Newham are under threat for the same reasons. Often the first to go are the best, run by charities.Newpin, in Bethnal Green, is just one example. Although it has recently had a glowing evaluation report, exceeding its targets by 20 per cent this year, it is to close. Each year it takes in some 80 profoundly depressed mothers who are not coping with their children, gives them a befriender and offers intensive support. They teach mothers who have never been mothered themselves how to play and talk to their children, visiting them at home, bringing in the isolated and getting them on their feet. Most of the co- ordinators are mothers who have been through the programme and turn into befrienders of others, passive victims becoming active supporters.However, suddenly, with no notice, the East London Health Authority, also in deep financial trouble, has withdrawn its pounds 30,000 funding. It will be the Social Exclusion Unit's task to make them all work together - very difficult indeed.

Partnership is the key word - making it happen is something else.What's actually happening? Disaster and chaos all over the place. Under the shadow of The Independent's offices in Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets council, one of the basket-case local authorities, is slashing its budgets Many others around the country are doing likewise. In a very harsh year for local authorities, social services almost everywhere are squeezed to the bone. Looking just at family projects, many are closing, others are being cut right back.

Meanwhile charities who run some of the best family projects dissipate their energy struggling to put together money from all these sources.All these agencies approach the same family from a very different point of view, using different budgets with different objectives. The Education Department is struggling with impossible young children who arrive at school unfit to learn, and the rising tide of school exclusions. Police, courts and probation try to deal with very young criminals, catching a very few at huge expense, doing nothing about prevention. The Environment Department oversees local authorities and social services, responsible for rescuing families from the brink and for children in care.