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The Guardian view on troubled families: tackle troubled society The Guardian view on troubled families: tackle troubled society | |
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In the aftermath of the UK riots in the summer of 2011, which resulted in a total of 1,800 years of prison sentences being handed down, the still-new prime minister David Cameron reannounced his troubled families programme. The policy, first unveiled a year earlier, identified 120,000 families with multiple deprivations such as unemployment, long-term illness or poor housing whose chaotic lives were, Mr Cameron declared, costing the country £9bn a year. By putting a key worker into the family to help them to tackle their problems and “turn them around”, the new policy was projected to save central and local government £1bn in costly emergency interventions such as police callouts. Last year, the first stage of the programme was deemed so successful that it would be extended to 400,000 more families. This week, the first evaluation of the programme’s early years was finally published. Ministers will not find it happy reading. Questioning the value of the whole programme, it is sceptical of the credibility of the data, and the confidence with which “success” is attributed to intervention. | In the aftermath of the UK riots in the summer of 2011, which resulted in a total of 1,800 years of prison sentences being handed down, the still-new prime minister David Cameron reannounced his troubled families programme. The policy, first unveiled a year earlier, identified 120,000 families with multiple deprivations such as unemployment, long-term illness or poor housing whose chaotic lives were, Mr Cameron declared, costing the country £9bn a year. By putting a key worker into the family to help them to tackle their problems and “turn them around”, the new policy was projected to save central and local government £1bn in costly emergency interventions such as police callouts. Last year, the first stage of the programme was deemed so successful that it would be extended to 400,000 more families. This week, the first evaluation of the programme’s early years was finally published. Ministers will not find it happy reading. Questioning the value of the whole programme, it is sceptical of the credibility of the data, and the confidence with which “success” is attributed to intervention. |
The strategy itself is not entirely wrong. A key worker who can make sure that a family with difficulties has access to the right support, and gives them a point of contact and a friend in an emergency really can make a difference, as evaluations of local projects often show. But the data does not exist – or not yet – that will show precisely what difference has been made, and whether it has been made exclusively by the efforts of the key worker with the family, or by external factors such as the sudden availability of jobs in a local supermarket or an estate-wide regeneration project. | The strategy itself is not entirely wrong. A key worker who can make sure that a family with difficulties has access to the right support, and gives them a point of contact and a friend in an emergency really can make a difference, as evaluations of local projects often show. But the data does not exist – or not yet – that will show precisely what difference has been made, and whether it has been made exclusively by the efforts of the key worker with the family, or by external factors such as the sudden availability of jobs in a local supermarket or an estate-wide regeneration project. |
The most basic data – the number of “troubled families” – is based on an extrapolation from work done by Labour’s social exclusion taskforce in 2004 that suggested 2% of families might have multiple deprivations. But that percentage produced a relatively small number, and failed to account for sampling error (which could theoretically produce a negative number) or bias. Once the number had been established, councils were then informed how many families in their area fell into the category, and told that they would be paid for each one whose life was “turned around”, measured through targets such as an end to truanting or finding work. | The most basic data – the number of “troubled families” – is based on an extrapolation from work done by Labour’s social exclusion taskforce in 2004 that suggested 2% of families might have multiple deprivations. But that percentage produced a relatively small number, and failed to account for sampling error (which could theoretically produce a negative number) or bias. Once the number had been established, councils were then informed how many families in their area fell into the category, and told that they would be paid for each one whose life was “turned around”, measured through targets such as an end to truanting or finding work. |
Applying payment by results to even the most intractable social challenges was the incoming coalition government’s mantra for delivering cost-effective services. It was a way of concentrating the efforts of the state on measurable outcomes, and it was welcomed as a useful way of delivering improvements while cutting overall spending. It had the advantage of making it easier to contract service delivery to the private sector, and soon big business was playing a role in a way that has since become widely discredited. It is now clear that paying for outcomes, increasingly popular in the NHS, tends to oversimplify targets and distort results. Making what gets counted count has the unintended consequence of disempowering practitioners who struggle to do what is right despite being constrained by specified objectives. But, as Dame Louise Casey, who ran the programme in its early years, told MPs on Wednesday, officials are used to backfilling method behind ministerial pledges. | Applying payment by results to even the most intractable social challenges was the incoming coalition government’s mantra for delivering cost-effective services. It was a way of concentrating the efforts of the state on measurable outcomes, and it was welcomed as a useful way of delivering improvements while cutting overall spending. It had the advantage of making it easier to contract service delivery to the private sector, and soon big business was playing a role in a way that has since become widely discredited. It is now clear that paying for outcomes, increasingly popular in the NHS, tends to oversimplify targets and distort results. Making what gets counted count has the unintended consequence of disempowering practitioners who struggle to do what is right despite being constrained by specified objectives. But, as Dame Louise Casey, who ran the programme in its early years, told MPs on Wednesday, officials are used to backfilling method behind ministerial pledges. |
The troubled families initiative serves a useful political purpose too, one that fits with this government’s wider outlook. Mr Cameron, by linguistic trickery, turned troubled families into families that cause trouble. It is a striking contrast to the last Labour government’s Sure Start programme. The Conservative policy picks out a small group of people and makes them into a problem for the rest of society. Worse, the implication for those defined as troubled families is that they are living in a chaos of their own making. Blaming individual failure allows the government to ignore, for example, the difficulty of finding a job when the economy is in recession, or the impossibility of getting treatment for mental illness when there are no beds. Sure Start did exactly the reverse. It put good-quality facilities into neighbourhoods and made them universally accessible. There was no stigma associated with going to ask for advice or help. Sure Start centres treated the kind of problem that has become identified with individual inadequacy as a problem that everyone should be involved in tackling. Radical critics of the troubled families initiative call it a programme about politics, not social policy, and it is hard to disagree. | The troubled families initiative serves a useful political purpose too, one that fits with this government’s wider outlook. Mr Cameron, by linguistic trickery, turned troubled families into families that cause trouble. It is a striking contrast to the last Labour government’s Sure Start programme. The Conservative policy picks out a small group of people and makes them into a problem for the rest of society. Worse, the implication for those defined as troubled families is that they are living in a chaos of their own making. Blaming individual failure allows the government to ignore, for example, the difficulty of finding a job when the economy is in recession, or the impossibility of getting treatment for mental illness when there are no beds. Sure Start did exactly the reverse. It put good-quality facilities into neighbourhoods and made them universally accessible. There was no stigma associated with going to ask for advice or help. Sure Start centres treated the kind of problem that has become identified with individual inadequacy as a problem that everyone should be involved in tackling. Radical critics of the troubled families initiative call it a programme about politics, not social policy, and it is hard to disagree. |