Troubled Families Programme Research Articles

The Problems with Troubled Families: Rethinking the Analysis Behind the 120,000 Troubled Families Statistic

In the aftermath of the 2011 England riots, the then Prime Minister David Cameron referred to a ‘small number of families as the source of a large number of problems in society’ (Cameron, 2011). Soon after, the Troubled Families Programme was set up by the government to ‘turn around’ 120,000 troubled families. Despite government rhetoric focusing on ‘neighbours from hell’ (ibid.) the initial estimate of the number of troubled families did not include any indicators of problematic behaviours, such as crime or anti-social behaviour. Instead, a measure previously used by government to classify families with multiple social and economic disadvantages was used (Social Exclusion Task Force, 2007a). This article revisits the research behind the initial identification of the 120,000 troubled families and explores more widely the overlap between families with multiple social and economic disadvantage and their engagement in problematic behaviours. Our reanalysis of the original research data reveals that although families experiencing multiple social and economic disadvantage were at an increased risk of displaying problematic behaviour, only a small minority did so.

Extra funding promised for Troubled Families programme

Up to £165 million new funding has been pledged to help parents get their lives back on track through a government programme targeted at vulnerable families

‘We know it works. . .’: The Troubled Families Programme and the pre-determined boundary judgements of decontextualised policy evaluation

This article draws on the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) to highlight the ways in which particular contexts – such as socioeconomic and symbolic structures – are neglected in forms of evaluation with an establishment orientation. The article problematises two key aspects of decontextualised evaluation: firstly, the privileging of pre-determined relations of cause and effect; and secondly, the unproblematized framing of policy problems. More contextualised forms of evaluation are presented as a way to open up boundaries of investigation. Lastly, it is argued that an anti-naturalist foundation for evaluation can broaden the scope of learning beyond the original framing of a policy.

Evaluation of the Troubled Families Programme

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have carried out ground breaking work over several years to put in place a robust, rigorous and innovative impact evaluation of the expanded Troubled Families Programme: a targeted intervention programme for families with multiple issues including crime, anti-social behaviour, truancy, unemployment, mental health problems and domestic abuse.
 The evaluation was set up in 2015 and runs until the end of the Programme in 2020. The research design allows us to observe the impact of the Programme at a national level on a wide range of outcomes it aims to affect, spanning the remit of several government departments. It also enables us to control for family and individual characteristics to ensure that a 'comparison group' can be used to derive a robust estimate of the impact of the Programme on those who have taken part.
 A key aspect of the evaluation is the use of matched nationally held administrative datasets, including the National Pupil Database (which provides educational attainment and attendance as well as data for Children in Need), the Police National Computer (which provides data on offending behaviour) and The Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study (which provides data on employment and benefits). With the help of our trusted third party contractor (ONS), this data is collected and matched to individual level information of families eligible for the programme provided by local authorities (for both those on the programme and in the comparison group).
 There are many advantages of using administrative data to measure outcomes: we have access to a wealth of historical data on a large number of individuals and families which has allowed us to control for a range of covariates and to develop Propensity Score Matching models to compare the outcomes of those on the programme and the comparison group. The data collected from local authorities also means we can analyse the data at an individual and family level, this is extremely rare with datasets of this nature.
 The impact and wider evaluation findings have provided valuable evidence to support the development of the policy over the programme’s lifetime. The impact results have provided an assessment of what effect the programme is having on child and adult outcomes for those on the programme compared to those who have not yet started. In particular, it allows us to consider the impacts on service use, and attributing costs and benefits to these changes in use of services allows us to weigh up the overall public value of the programme. Other elements of the evaluation, such as the area level case studies and family survey have provided some context for our findings.
 The presentation will discuss the evaluation design, the impact results for child social care, crime, employment and benefits, along with findings from the cost-benefit analysis of the programme.

The Troubled Families Programme: Learning about policy impact through realist case study research

AbstractThis article aims to critically explore how qualitative case study research that is founded on realist principles can fundamentally enhance social policy evaluation methodologies and, in turn, provide improved learning for policy makers and practitioners. We suggest that these methodological advantages are accrued through the careful construction of theory‐based explanations of “how” policy programmes work thereby addressing the limitations of quasi‐experimental methods—namely, a focus on and prioritisation of outcome measures. The paper situates this key argument within wider, long‐standing debates about evidence‐based policy making and what constitutes “evidence” of impact in social policy. It does so through reflection on the contentious and contradictory knowledge claims that surround the Troubled Families Programme and evaluative claims regarding its efficacy. In conclusion and looking forward, we suggest that there remains much scope to combine “intensive” qualitative case studies with “extensive” quantitative measures within local and national evaluations of complex, multidimensional social policies, such as the Troubled Families Programme.

Making the case for intervening earlier

Building on the impact of the Troubled Families programme can be vital for securing the future of early help in upcoming spending review

Multiple Needs, ‘Troubled Families’ and Social Work

Concerns about a minority of families have resurfaced in social policy at key moments throughout recent history. Whether these families are viewed as having ‘needs’ or ‘problems’; and whether they are seen as primarily ‘troubled’ or ‘troublesome’ shifts and changes along with the solutions put forward. This article considers the ‘Troubled Families Programme’ (TFP) in England as a contemporary response. It draws on research commissioned by a city local authority concerned with profiling key aspects of the needs of 103 families worked with in the early part of the first phase of the TFP. While research and policy have frequently underlined the multiple needs and high level of service involvement characteristic of these families, remarkably little is known about the lived experience of multiply disadvantaged families and the wider context of their lives. In this paper, we place the 103 families' circumstances within a temporal context by presenting unique historical data on their service involvement. We focus in particular on families' contact histories with Children's Social Care. The research presented in the article reveals an extraordinarily high level of involvement with social services across generations among the families referred to the TFP. The article argues that there is a need to better understand families' pathways through the life course and outwith immediate referral criteria. It also raises important questions about the respective roles for the TFP and social workers.

Troubled Families programme: its impact and what should replace it

An evaluation of the government's Troubled Families programme suggests it has helped cut care rates by a third as councils invested millions in early help. With the scheme due to end, leaders say the funding must continue

Between “Families in Trouble” and “Children at Risk”: Historicising “Troubled Family” Policy in England since 1945

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in 2011 has thrown into sharp relief how governments develop policies and practices to intervene in the lives of so‐called ‘troubled families’. Commentators were quick to make comparisons with historic efforts to rehabilitate ‘problem families’ in the post‐war period. However, beyond discursive similarities, there are also marked continuities in how family policies have been developed and implemented. This review narrates the rise, fall and rise of concern about ‘problem’ and ‘troubled’ families in England in the context of anxieties about child and family welfare, and the appropriate response of the state.

The UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme: Delivering Social Justice?

This article examines and reviews the evidence surrounding the UK Government’s Troubled Families Programme (TFP), a flagship social policy launched in 2011, following riots in towns and cities across England. The programme aims to work with over 500,000 ‘troubled families’ by 2020, using a ‘whole family’ intervention. It has been beset by controversy and criticism since its inception, but it has been described by the government as ‘promoting social justice’. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s work around recognition and redistribution, this article assesses the subjective aims and achievements of the TFP and locates this analysis in the wider objective conditions experienced by disadvantaged families in the UK at the current time.

Contingent coping? Renegotiating ‘fast’ disciplinary social policy at street level: Implementing the UK Troubled Families Programme

This article reports on a study of local implementation in the UK Troubled Families Programme (TFP). Exploring the experiences of 12 families, the policies of local bureaucrats, and a critical reading of the literature, we argue that the local case represented an attempt to partially renegotiate disciplinary elements of the national programme and to recognise that the families were affected by structural poverty and inequality. Locating the TFP in the literature on disciplinary social policy, multi-scale ‘Fast Policy’ and the potential for local subversion through the agency of frontline workers, we suggest that the local attempts to renegotiate programme priorities were partially successful. These attempts were characteristic of ‘contingent coping’ in terms of both institutional processes and outcomes for the families involved. The evidence reported is significant and timely in the context of the expanded and relaunched TFP and this shapes our commentary on the recently published Improving Lives strategy.

Using Big Data in Policy Evaluations: the Troubled Families Programme

BackgroundThe Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government have carried out one of the biggest data linkage exercises in government in order to evaluate the impact of the Troubled Families Programme. Linking individual and family level data across multiple administrative datasets has proven to be both innovative and cost-effective, enabling us to place children in the broader context of their family and household circumstances for our analysis.
 ObjectivesTo use administrative datasets to measure children’s service use outcomes, for both programme and comparison individuals and families, to assess the impact of the Troubled Families Programme on outcomes for ‘children needing help’.
 MethodsThe comparison group provide a counterfactual, used to derive a robust assessment of the programme’s impact on children’s outcomes: in this case child safeguarding. Linked datasets means we can control for both individual and family level characteristics, such as parental employment, benefits, school attendance, children and adult offending and the circumstances of siblings. We have used propensity score matching to control for all covariates impacting on both treatment and outcome status.
 FindingsPreliminary findings show a statistically significant reduction in the number of ‘children in need’ in the 6-12 month period after intervention start compared to the matched comparison group, and a reduction in the number of ‘looked after children’. There was an increase in the number of children with a ‘child protection plan’, but this was not statistically significantly different to the comparison group.
 ConclusionsWhile access to such a wide range of individual and family characteristics is a key methodological advantage to evaluation, challenges include: missing data, time lags in the datasets and complex variable definitions. We have worked and continueto work with other government departments to overcome these. Whilst still in its earliest stages preliminary results for the programme’s impact are encouraging.

Learning from Troubled Families

How can commissioners use the Troubled Families programme to lead local transformation, asks Richard Selwyn

The Troubled Families Programme and the Problems of Success

The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) is the latest example of a tradition of family intervention projects (FIPs) for which the evidence basis for success is ambiguous. However, research does suggest that features of such projects – for example, time and flexibility of FIP workers, afforded by relatively small caseloads – offer some benefits for service users. This article draws on an evaluation of a FIP delivered by a Unitary Authority as part of the wider TFP to consider such features and found similar benefits. The article frames the research in terms of the expansion of the TFP and the implications this may have for its practical successes. It concludes by underscoring that by extending the programme whilst reducing its funding the most recent round of the TFP threatens precisely the features previously identified as most advantageous.

Domesticating the ‘troubled family’: Racialised sexuality and the postcolonial governance of family life in the UK

This article examines how the UK’s Troubled Families Programme works as a strategy of domestication which produces and delimits certain forms of ‘family life’. Drawing upon critical geographies of home and empire, the article explores how the Troubled Families Programme works to manage the troubled family as part of a longer history of regulating unruly households in the name of national health and civilisation. Viewing the Troubled Families Programme as part of the production of heteronormative order highlights how the policy remobilises and reconfigures older forms of colonial rule which work to demarcate between civility/savagery, the developable/undevelopable. In examining the postcolonial dimension of neoliberal social policy, the article stresses how the Troubled Families Programme relies on racialising and sexualised logics of socio-biological control borrowed from imperial eugenics. Reading the Troubled Families Programme in this way contributes to our understanding of neoliberal rule. That the troubled family can be either domesticated or destroyed (through benefit sanctions and eviction) equally reveals the extent to which domesticity works as a key site for the production of both ‘worthy’ and ‘surplus’ life.

The ‘troubled’ case of Rotherham

In March 2015, David Cameron announced that social workers may face up to five years’ imprisonment if they ‘wilfully neglect’ child abuse. This announcement was made following the release of an independent inquiry report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. The author of this report was Louise Casey, Director General of the Troubled Families programme. Casey’s findings not only raised a number of concerns about the way in which child sexual exploitation was handled by Rotherham, but also led to the potential criminalisation of social workers. In this article, we use a critical discourse analysis approach and Lukes’s three-dimensional power framework to examine the inspection report. Our findings suggest that although approaches towards child sexual exploitation do need to improve, Casey’s report may in fact prevent us from understanding what actually did happen in Rotherham, why it happened and what is required to minimise the chances of it happening again.

Introduction: ‘Looking for Trouble?’ Critically Examining the UK Government's Troubled Families Programme

The Troubled Families Programme (TFP) was launched by the UK Coalition Government in December 2011. Following the riots that took place in towns and cities across England during that summer, the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to put ‘rocket boosters’ under plans to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country's ‘most troubled families’ by the end of the Coalition's term of office in May 2015. In his ‘fightback’ speech, delivered just a week after the riots had ended, Cameron (2011a) stated that the riots were not about poverty or race or government cuts. Instead, he argued that that the riots were ‘about behaviour: people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint’.

Some Useful Sources

This useful sources section focuses on four key areas related to the Troubled Families Programme: official government documents and sources of information relating to the programme; emerging academic research relating specifically to the implementation of the programme; sources which help to locate the programme in its wider historical context; and international perspectives which provide information on how ‘troubled families’ are viewed in different countries. The sources listed here hopefully add to and complement the bibliographies of the individual articles in this section.

Domestic Surveillance and the Troubled Families Programme: Understanding relationality and constraint in the homes of multiply disadvantaged families

This article explores the experiences of families within the Troubled Families Programme in responding to professional concerns about the condition and maintenance of the family home. Drawing upon care ethicists’ development of relational autonomy perspectives, neoliberal assumptions about personal agency and responsibility are challenged, and the complexity of the constraints upon families highlighted. Within this framework, family interventions can be repositioned, not as an intrusive form of domestic surveillance levied at working class women, but as an opportunity to support families (and especially mothers) to overcome oppressive conditions which constrain their capacity to act.

From the desk to the front-room? The changing spaces of street-level encounters with the state under austerity

The impact of recent welfare reforms and austerity measures have fallen unevenly on different regions and different household types in the UK. These changes are generally referred to as a ‘withdrawal’ or ‘retrenchment’ of the state. It is also possible, however, to argue that the state is actually extending its reach into the lives of disadvantaged or ‘troubled’ families. This article highlights how, in recent years, the site of government interventions into the lives of marginalised populations has progressively shifted from the public spaces of offices, and neighbourhood and community buildings, to the private, domestic spaces of the ‘family’. The changing spaces of street-level encounters with the state are characterised as a shift from ‘the desk’ or ‘the counter’ to the ‘front door’ of the family home. The rhetoric surrounding the Troubled Families Programme is examined and some of the political and symbolic functions of the ‘front-door’ discourse are expounded.