Intensive Family Intervention and the Problem Figuration of ‘Troubled Families’

Abstract

This article examines how intensive family interventions in England since 1997, including the Coalition Government's Troubled Families Programme, are situated in a contemporary problem figuration of 'anti-social' or 'troubled' families that frames and justifies the utilisation of different models of intensive family intervention. The article explores how techniques of classification and estimation, combined with the controversial use of 'research' evidence in policy making are situated within a 'rational fiction' that constructs 'anti-social' families in particular ways. The article illustrates how this problem figuration has evolved during the New Labour and Coalition administrations in England, identifying their similarities and differences. It then presents findings from a study of intensive family intervention strategies and mechanisms in a large English city to illustrate how this national level discourse and policy framework relates to developing localised practice and the tensions and ambiguities that arise.

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

“…The Coalition Government's TFP was the first semantic policy commitment to target and ‘turn around’ the lives of ‘troubled families’. It did, however, have clear roots in the earlier politics of ‘social exclusion’ developed under New Labour from 1997 (Ball and others, ; Butler, ). These, in turn, were based on the rolling out of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs); a new method of intervening in the lives of families developed in Dundee in 1995 aiming to reduce the number of homeless families and the high costs they represented to local authorities by preventing evictions through intensive supervision of family behaviour (Parr, ).…”

‘Getting with the (troubled families) programme’: a review

“…Similar practices have been identified in relation to ‘problem families’ during the post-war period (Todd, 2014) and under pioneer projects under New Labour. Parr and Nixon (2009: 108–9) note that local FIPs ‘developed an alternative conceptualisation “of the problem” of ASB [anti-social behaviour] that, in part, contradicted the national popular discourse at the time’ and that individual workers ‘actively challenged media stereotypes that referred to families as “neighbours from hell” or “yobs” (see also Parr, 2009; Ball et al ., 2016). A further central concern of FIPs and the TFP is their construction as a response not just to ‘troublesome’ families but to the putative failures of costlier ways of delivering services to such families.…”

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

“…There has been a growing recognition of the inadequacy and indeed the immorality of pursuing responsibilisation agendas within the TFP which emphasise human agency, autonomy and rational choice within the context of broader neoliberal politics that actually diminishes the power and autonomy of the most marginalised sections of society (Tew, 2013;Ball et al, 2016;Boddy et al, 2016;Bond-Taylor, forthcoming). Researchers have argued for the need to develop adequately theorised responses to the 'problem' which take into account context, constraint and relationality in respect of families facing multiple disadvantages (Jack and Gill, 2013;Flint, 2012), whilst keeping issues of agency at the fore (Parr, 2011).…”