Research: ‘help or hindrance’?

This chapter analyses the engagement of researchers with previous debates about ‘the underclass’ and notes that a recurring feature of such debates is the involvement of researchers. It examines the research approach within the Troubled Families Programme (TFP), highlighting the use, misuse, and abuse of research in a number of key areas. The chapter looks at a number of issues including the misrepresentation of data behind the Understanding Troubled Families report which helped support the case for the expansion of the TFP; the invention of a survey that allegedly proved the need for radical reform of services to help troubled families; the use of case studies in the troubled families narrative; and the criticism of researchers involved with the official evaluation of the first phase of the TFP.

The ‘long and undistinguished pedigree’

This chapter outlines both the long and problematic history of the underclass thesis, and the shorter history of the concept of ‘troubled families’. The first part of the chapter draws on comprehensive research from social policy academics and social historians that have traced different reconstructions of the underclass thesis from Victorian times. The remainder of the chapter concentrates on the shift from a concern about the underclass in more recent years, from a mid-1970s concerns about a ‘cycle of deprivation’ through Charles Murray's work on the underclass in the 1980s, to the New Labour concern with problem families in the mid-2000s and the Conservatives' interest in an allegedly broken society.

The ‘responsibility deficit’

This chapter analyses Prime Minister David Cameron's claim, when he launched the Troubled Families Programme (TFP), that his mission in politics was fixing the responsibility deficit. Turning this mission on its head, the chapter focuses on the ways in which the coalition and Conservative governments have abdicated their responsibilities to poor, disadvantaged, and marginalised families. The chapter locates TFP as a central plank of attempts to craft a neoliberal state in the UK. Drawing on the work of Loïc Wacquant and his call for neoliberalism to be understood sociologically rather than economically, the chapter shows how the TFP has been expanded at the same time that traditional welfare services have been rolled back.

The evolution of the Troubled Families Programme

This chapter considers the evolution of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) as it has been implemented. Shifts and developments in the first phase are discussed, including the problems of some local authorities in finding troubled families and the subsequent relaxation of the criteria for what constituted a ‘troubled family’ at that stage of the programme. The chapter discusses the changes that happened as a result of the massive expansion of the programme into its second phase, working with 400,000 more families, including new entry criteria for families, new measures of success, and a new Payment by Results (PbR) framework. It also explores the next phase of the programme, announced in April 2017 and with a stronger focus on supporting workless families into employment.

Street-level perspectives

This chapter focuses on the implementation of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) and explores the changes that have been made to the programme at local levels. It highlights deviations from the national rhetoric and the way in which much of the aggressive, muscular rhetoric has been softened to reflect a more supportive approach towards families at both a local authority level and from individual workers. Local authorities have adapted the programme to make it work for them in a number of different ways and success has often been achieved in spite of the programme rather than because of it. The chapter explores how local authorities have subverted, negotiated, and resisted the national rhetoric in order to make the programme work and to achieve the targets set by the government.

Introduction: ‘Looking for trouble’

This introductory chapter provides a background for the establishment of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP), a single central government programme that aims to ‘turn around’ the lives of trouble families. The government used existing research carried out on families experiencing multiple structural disadvantages such as poverty, material deprivation, low skills, and poor-quality housing to prove that the troubled families were characterised by crime, antisocial behaviour, truancy, and worklessness. The chapter shows that troubled families were also associated with a much wider range of problems including drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, child abuse and poor physical and mental health, gang membership, radical extremism, and organised crime.

‘Nothing to hide’: the structural duplicity of the Troubled Families Programme

This concluding chapter sheds light on the structural duplicity of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) across a number of areas. It presents three main principles of the TFP. First, it examines the role of ‘extraordinary workers’, the bureaucratic heroes who are able to support troubled families no matter what challenges they face. Second, the chapter turns to the allegedly special and different relationship that exists between these workers and the troubled families they work with. Finally, the chapter considers the idea that families' lives have been turned around by the TFP, drawing on data from the evaluation but also by scrutinising the many loopholes in the Payment by Results mechanism for the first phase.

‘This thing called family intervention …’

This chapter discusses how the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) is predicated on the family intervention model, which relies on a key worker gaining the trust of a family, building a relationship with them and then working intensively with them in a holistic manner. It considers both the domestic and international history of such approaches, including the 1940s Family Service Unit approach. The chapter also examines the shorter history of the family intervention model, as well as the journey from a single Scottish voluntary sector project to a nationwide government programme in England. This includes the discursive shift from support to intervention; the introduction of the threat of sanctions; the types of families targeted across all projects; and changes to the level of resources allegedly required for effective family intervention.

The opening of a policy window

This chapter explores the development of the ‘troubled families’ discourse, starting in the early years of the coalition government that was formed in 2010. It details the shift from the localist approach of Whole Place Community Budgets and the Big Society Working Families Everywhere project to the local authority-led Troubled Families Programme. The role of the 2011 riots in England in shifting the government discourse and opening a policy window for a more robust interventionist approach is fully explored, with ‘compassionate Conservatism’ giving way to a more muscular policy programme following the disturbances. The chapter also analyses the establishment of the TFP in its first phase along with the role of Louise Casey, the charismatic senior civil servant in charge of it.