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

Abstract

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in 2011 has thrown into sharp relief how governments develop policies and practices to intervene in the lives of so‐called ‘troubled families’. Commentators were quick to make comparisons with historic efforts to rehabilitate ‘problem families’ in the post‐war period. However, beyond discursive similarities, there are also marked continuities in how family policies have been developed and implemented. This review narrates the rise, fall and rise of concern about ‘problem’ and ‘troubled’ families in England in the context of anxieties about child and family welfare, and the appropriate response of the state.

An analysis of English national policy approaches to health inequalities: ‘transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’ and its consultation process

“…The government ([ 45 ] , p.16) responded to these criticisms by explicitly recognising that disadvantage can exacerbate mental health problems, and referenced investment in the Troubled Families Programme as a response to working with ‘the whole family to overcome their multiple and complex problems’. However, this programme has been heavily criticised for its framing of certain families as ‘troubled’, thereby individualising and reducing what are much wider societal problems to a selection of ‘problem’ families [ 47 , 48 ].…”

‘There is No Icebreaker like a Tiny Child’: Reuniting British Military Families in Cold War Germany

“…24 For others, separation was temporary but still keenly felt: in Britain, wartime employment and evacuation had parted children from parents, the consequences of which ignited a voracious professional and state interest in young people and 'troubled families'. 25 On both sides of the emerging iron curtain, the family became an emblem of a new futurefacing mentality. 26 Of course, the family was not 'discovered' in 1945: the 'family unit [has long been seen] as a building block of state power', one around which images of nationhood have been continually created.…”

Family Hubs and the vulnerable care ecologies of child and family welfare in austerity

“…Varying forms of 'early intervention' to promote child and family wellbeing have been a core focus of child welfare practice in England since the Victorian period (Frost et al, 2015). Approaches to family support have historically cycled through different forms of engagement and interventions, fluctuating between more community orientated, universalist models of family support (Pierson, 2011), and more controlling, targeted and decontextualised approaches marked by dynamics of policing 'families in trouble' (Lambert, 2019). There is some indication, too, that these shifts also coincide with economic transitions from periods of relative affluence to times of greater austerity (Lucas and Archard, 2021).…”