Trouble for families
A ‘family approach’ sounds like a positive thing but programmes such as Troubled Families – renamed Supporting Families – are very much the proverbial wolf in sheep clothing. The families intervened in are scapegoated and stigmatised, consent replaced with coercion and sanctions.
And it isn’t only those families that are hurt by this approach.
This approach of targeting individuals for intervention, rather than providing the wider support and services families are entitled to, comes at the cost of accepting state overstep into families, the loss of children’s rights to privacy and to protection of their personal information. The ‘family approach’ has been given as justification for ‘frictionless’ information sharing and surveillance of ALL families, not just those who might need help.
“…The ethos of the program justifies forcing very vulnerable families with mental health problems into projects under threat of eviction, loss of benefits and removal of children into care.”
“…tens of thousands of vulnerable families have been bullied to no good effect, and hundreds of millions of pounds of public money has been wasted on populist, voodoo social engineering.”
David Gregg (retired Professor)
Written evidence submitted to select committee on Troubled Families (2016)
“The damage that has been inflicted by the Troubled Families programme is far greater than the quite staggering waste of money that it represents. What it has done is pathologised a whole group of perfectly ordinary, if distressing, life events. If you are unlucky enough to be diagnosed with, say multiple sclerosis, does that put you on the watch list? What happens if an out-of-work father succumbs to depression at the same time as a teenage child experiments with soft drugs around the same time? Is that family really “troubled”, or just coping with the complicated business of being alive?”
“The expansion of this primarily punitive, muscular interventionist programme suggests that more trouble lies ahead for marginalised and structurally disadvantaged families in the UK.”
The myth of the targetable group
The myth at the heart of the ‘think family’ agenda – and what is used to justify the need for surveillance – is that there is a particular group of uniquely problematic families who need to be ‘identified’ and ‘intervened in’.
There aren’t.
Instead there are huge numbers of families struggling in a society which is deeply unequal, where public support has been slashed and where recently the cost of living has exploded while wages and welfare have been suppressed.
“At one point I think we thought the National Troubled Families programme was a list of 2,385….what we realised a week in was that our 2,385 was completely different to the one that we had the week before because everybody was shifting in and out of different characteristics. “
Paul Holme Research and Intelligence Manager
Manchester City Council presentation on iBase system (2017)
…what we realise if we interrogate the research behind the imputed existence of 120,000 troubled families, this turns out to be a factoid – something that takes the form of a fact, but is not. It is used to support policies that in no way follow from the research on which the figure is based. The problem is not the research itself, but its misuse.”
Failed. Not bad
Despite government claims there was little evidence to connect the identified families with criminality or anti-social behaviour. Instead ‘Supporting/Troubled Families’ provides a snapshot of which groups are being most failed by the state.
Single parent families are massively over represented (50%). Families with a child under 5 (49%) 20.7% of families were getting a health/disability related benefit (compared to a national average of 5.8%). 44.8% of families had at least one child with special educational needs or disabilities. 6% of children had a statement of special educational needs (compared to a national average of 2.9%).
While the majority of families were white, non-white families were over represented on the programme at 19.9% compared to a national average of 14%.
“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.”
Dr Matt Barnes and Andy Ross
Social Policy and Society: The Problems with Troubled Families: Rethinking the Analysis Behind the 120,000 Troubled Families Statistic (2021)
“The ‘120,000 families’ identified in the original SETF report do indeed have troubles: physical and mental ill-health, poor housing, income poverty, material deprivation.”
“The strength and resilience of many working class families, and especially women and mothers, has been misrecognised as a failure to live up to middle-class standards and priorities…”
“The idea that hardship and discrimination is to do with how much attention of the right sort that mothers give to their children, and the notion of countering global traumas and inequalities through parenting, is jaw-dropping.”
Professors Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards and Dr Nicola Horsley
Challenging the Politics of Early Intervention
Families not helped
Despite the significant costs – not only financial but also impact on the privacy and data protection of children and families – there is very little evidence that families are helped.
“If many ‘troubled families’ are still accessing foodbanks, still struggling in low-paid, poor quality jobs, still living in poor-quality housing, still not getting the mental health support they need, or continuing to experience domestic abuse, as many will be, should we really be celebrating the ‘success’ of a programme that primarily succeeds in making people feel more resilient about facing these issues?”
“The terminology used by the Department overstated the success of the Troubled Families programme in transforming the lives of families…”
“our analysis found no impact on these outcomes [employment, benefit receipt, school attendance, safeguarding and child welfare] attributable to the programme.”
Professor Jonathan Portes, Dr Helen Bewley et al
National Institute of Economic and social Research: National Evaluation of the Troubled Families Programme (2016)
Data sharing
Human rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about the sharing of huge amounts of information about children and their families without consent.
54,000 families – a total of 170,000 individuals – had their information shared as part of Bristol’s Think Family database. This is huge amounts of data sharing to justify targeting a small number of children, especially given that many families are asking for help that isn’t available. The response has always been that it helps keep children safe, and is therefore worth the trade off – but this ignores the extensive evidence showing that it also harms the children and families involved.
“Information sharing has been at the heart of the troubled families programme since it first began.”
“while the TFP did not meet its stated objectives, its real impact was beyond the public view, in significantly re-ordering welfare mechanisms, and ingraining and normalizing a routine datafication of families.”
Professors Val Gillies and Ros Edwards and Dr Helene Vannier Ducasse
De Gruyter Oldenbourg: Calibrating families: Data behaviourism and the new algorithmic logic (2024)
“Prior to 2012, bringing together identifiable data profiles on this scale would have been categorically unlawful, but while arguments were raging as to whether troubled families existed and how to work with them, new legislation (including the 2012 Welfare Reform Act and the 2017 Digital Economy Act) was quietly introduced to provide de facto exceptions, allowing data to be linked without families’ consent,for the specific purpose of identifying and monitoring “troubled families”.”
Professors Val Gillies and Ros Edwards and Dr Helene Vannier Ducasse
De Gruyter Oldenbourg: Calibrating families: Data behaviourism and the new algorithmic logic (2024)