£114,000 bid to make family diet

Their local authority has signed a one-year contract with private care workers to look after the eight-strong family – all of whom are too fat.

Last year, Dundee City Council told the parents it would take their six children into care if they failed to lose weight. Now, in a desperate bid to get the family to slim, the council has taken the unprecedented step of putting the family "out to tender" by offering a 114,000 contract for their care.

The successful bidder, the Dundee Families Project, will provide three full-time professionals, including a dedicated health worker, to take care of the family, which includes a 12-year-old boy weighing 16 stone and two of his sisters, aged 11 and three, weighing 12 stone and four stone respectively.

The Dundee family first came to the attention of social services early last year when they asked for help in caring for the children, including the three-year-old girl, who has developmental problems. But social workers who visited the family were shocked at the size of the whole family – including a 21-month-old boy, who they claimed was overweight at 26lbs.

The council took the radical steps of telling the 23-stone mother and her 18-stone husband that, unless the children lost weight, they would be removed from the family home.

The children's mother, who is 39, said: "This is every family's worst nightmare. I just can't stop crying at the thought I could lose my beautiful children for ever.

"They keep making an issue about the kids' weight. I don't even own a deep-fat fryer. All my food is home-cooked and the kids are not fed junk food."

The Dundee Families Project is based in a tenement in the city's St Mary's estate. Launched in 1996, it was designed to house some of Scotland's most disruptive families and has been nicknamed "Colditz".

A security camera is trained on the front door and one member of staff lives permanently in the block, which is occupied by three families at any given time, providing a 24-hour point of contact.