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The ‘troubled families’ numbers game

The figure of 120 000 was derived from research published by the previous government in 2007 on ‘families with multiple disadvantages’, using data collected in 2004. These disadvantages included housing conditions, material deprivation, and health problems, but the three national criteria for ‘troubled families’ included the behavioural characteristics of crime/antisocial behaviour, educational exclusion, and worklessness. It was claimed that these families cost the government »9 billion per year. Indicative numbers of ‘troubled families’ in each local authority area were identified using government deprivation data from 2007 and ‘child well-being’ data from 2009. The TFP has been subject to a number of criticisms about the (mis)uses of data with Ruth Levitas arguing that ‘‘anyone with any statistical sophistication will recognise it [the figure of 120 000 ‘troubled families’] as spuriously accurate’’ (Levitas, 2012, page 5). Local authority progress reports on the number of families ‘turned around’ by the programme are not official statistics and are therefore outside the remit and scrutiny of the UK Statistics Authority. Some local authorities have struggled to identify the number of ‘troubled families’ they have been allocated (Wiggins, 2012). These concerns and the relative infancy of the programme have not prevented the government from announcing the ‘massive expansion’ of the programme before any evaluation had reported any findings. In August 2014 (following an initial announcement in June 2013) the government published six criteria that were used to identify 400 000 more ‘troubled families’ in England for ‘Phase 2’ of the programme. It also informed local authorities of the five different data sources from three different years that had been used to identify the families.