Bringing home her groceries recently, Jane Leach, a 46-year-old caregiver for the elderly, described a typical weekend evening on the small grassy area that serves as a park of sorts between two rows of houses on her street. The youths start coming after 6, she said, dozens of them, boys and girls, mostly in their teens. They get drunk, take drugs, harass the residents, steal cars, urinate and defecate in the gardens, smash beer bottles on doorsteps, fight, pass out.

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When she tries to intervene, Ms. Leach said, the youths yell abuse at her. When she tells them to get off her car, they tell her there is nowhere else to sit. Recently, youths slashed every tire on 12 cars up and down the street, she said. When her partner was smashed in the face by a 14-year-old, Ms. Leach said, the police took 45 minutes to respond.

“They’ve got no respect at all for anybody,” she said.

The street is subject to a so-called dispersal order forbidding young people to congregate in groups larger than three or four. But the police have told her, she said, that it is better for the youths to be in one place so they don’t rampage separately through the neighborhood.

On one occasion, an officer said she was loath to step in because there was no one to back her up, Ms. Leach said. “I said, ‘Who do we have to call — the army?’ ”

When children chronically miss school, many localities require their parents to attend parenting classes, sometimes threatening them with prosecution if the truancy persists. Families with problems that run through the generations can in some places qualify for regular home visits from workers who teach them the basics of daily life: how to make sure everyone gets up on time and has breakfast; how to cook and sit down to a meal; what to do when a child misbehaves.

Under a new program, a handful of the most troubled families in some areas, including Manchester, are removed from their homes and placed in residential facilities, along with other problem families, where they are taught skills and the structure to cope with family life and the world outside. The programs have a high success rate for those who take part, but they are very expensive and labor-intensive, reaching only a few families.