The UK riots in 2011 led many people to point the finger at what were considered to be a core group of families who were out of control. The equilibrium of the country was shaken and the government knew that a strong stand was needed.
“Parent determinism” described the view that bad parenting was one of the key reasons for the riots, along with a “shameless” culture.
Action was taken, not only through sanctions and the chasing up of those involved, but also through the introduction of the Troubled Families programme. The aim of the programme was to turn around the 120,000 most troubled families in England by May 2015.
The troubled families had to meet three of the four criteria:
- Are involved in youth crime or anti-social behaviour.
- Have children who are regularly truanting or not in school.
- Have an adult on out-of-work benefits.
- Cause high costs to the taxpayer.
Although it was government-led, a key feature was to be local authorities who had to deliver the programme, but within strict constraints. There was to be no financial hand-out, but a payment by results system that would ensure that outcomes were achieved for the investment made.
Up to £4,000 per family could be collected by local authorities where interventions were successful. Some of the money was paid at the beginning to enable councils to start the scheme but the remainder would be dependent on the families selected being “turned around”.
The outcomes for different families would be determined by the criteria for their selection. For example, if a child has been out of school, “turned around” could mean that all the children in the family have fewer than three fixed term exclusions and less than 15 per cent unauthorised absences in the last three terms.
Although it was down to local authorities as to how they should spend the money, it was expected that the projects they chose would resemble the Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), which require key workers to provide intensive intervention. A key worker might have six families to work with over the course of a year and intervention might include:
- Use of a mixture of support, rewards and sanctions.
- A rigorous assessment and a persistent and assertive approach.
- Implementation of a regularly-reviewed support plan.
- Organisation of activities such as anger-management and parenting sessions.
- Organisation of activities for family members.
- Practical support to help manage the household.
- Sanctions perhaps involving the demotion of tenancies.
In July 2013, a second stage of the programme was announced to include another 400,000 families considered to be “high risk”. Although government support for the programme continues to be strong, there have been sceptics from the start.
The sceptics
Some felt that even with the criteria, councils would tend to select families that they knew could be turned around rather than those who they had perhaps been struggling with for years.
There were also concerns that the programme might divert resources from elsewhere. A small amount spent at the right time on a family below the threshold might avert escalating difficulties requiring multiple solutions later on. Would the programme remove some of this flexibility from local authorities?
In spite of these concerns, the programme has continued and in May 2015 the government published figures that showed that local authorities had turned around 99 per cent of the troubled families. This figure was welcomed by prime minister David Cameron as a government success and he expressed a commitment to the programme’s extension.
Although this very high success rate seemed to be accepted by some, others questioned it as simply not being plausible.
The Troubled Families Programme: The perfect social policy? by Stephen Crossley is a briefing written in November 2015 on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. It challenges the government’s assertion that the programme has a 99 per cent success rate, a claim which would seem extraordinarily optimistic.
Mr Crossley identifies 10 reasons for concern that should be applied to this claim and suggests: “The 99 per cent success rate of the programme is, in social policy terms, unbelievable. Local authorities, which have been hit by cuts and lost large numbers of staff, have allegedly ‘turned around’ almost the exact number of troubled families they were required to work with, at a time when those families will potentially have suffered as a result of austerity policies, cuts to local authority services and welfare reforms.”
Mr Crossley calls into question the effectiveness of the Family Intervention Project itself: “The best that can be said of the family intervention approach is that it appears to work for some families in some areas of their lives, at least for the time they are supported by a key worker.”
He claims that the “troubled families” may not be as troubled as was originally anticipated, with the main characteristics that they share being that they are White, not in work, live in social housing and have at least one household member experiencing poor health, illness and/or a disability. They are not as Mr Crossley puts it, “hardened criminal families who terrorise their neighbourhoods with children never at school and parents who have never worked”.
There are success stories as a result of the Troubled Families programme. A Guardian article published in November last year – Is the success of the government’s troubled families scheme too good to be true? – describes two families who have really benefited from the scheme.
However, for the same article, the Guardian sent Freedom of Information requests to all the councils taking part in the first phase of the programme. It found that more than 8,000 families in more than 40 local authorities had not received any kind of family intervention but had been turned around solely through data-matching exercises.
For example, councils might look for families who met the eligibility criteria but who had then been “turned around” anyway because their school attendance improved or they found a job by their own means without any intervention. Councils were prepared to acknowledge that a number of families they had worked with as part of the programme had not had their lives transformed.
What next?
What is perhaps most worrying is that in spite of the lack of concrete evidence and a searching evaluation, the programme continues to be expanded. The government would appear to be convinced that it is working well and should be applied to other areas of social work and support for families.
However, the claims and counter-claims surrounding this project need urgent further attention. If the approach is to be applied to the fragile and sensitive area of child protection it needs to be thoroughly vouched for. Its effectiveness must be proven through intensive examination and not just the word of local authorities being paid by results.
- Suzanne O’Connell is a freelance education writer and former primary school headteacher.
Further information
- The Troubled Families Programme: The perfect social policy? Stephen Crossley, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Briefing Paper, November 2015: http://bit.ly/1OPP5BQ
- Is the success of the government’s troubled families scheme too good to be true? Guardian, November 2015: http://bit.ly/1IPACBl