Getting into trouble with troubled families

1. Getting into trouble with troubled families Steering the bandwagon

2. The bandwagon • Intervening early in the affairs of families to reduce the later onset of troublesome behaviour has become a popular idea • Popularity has soared as its virtues have come to be championed by politicians. • Many are now on on the bandwagon but what are they supporting and why? • Bandwagonners often push the bandwagon in a new, unrelated and unwise direction • We can call this the “bandwagon effect”

3. The Troubled family bandwagon • The first casualty of the bandwagon effect is that being troubled has been conflated with being troublesome. • "These families are ruining their own lives, they're ruining their children's lives and they're ruining the lives of their neighbours and I think it's a laudable attempt to deal with that to get their kids back into school, to get them on the road to work and to cut down anti-social behaviour", (Eric Pickles) • The second casualty is that a rough estimate of the number of troubled families has become a focus for concerted action to prevent troublesomeness • Ruth Levitas (PSE UK 2012) has identified the derivation of the estimated number of troubled and so troublesome families • This is a 2007 analysis of 2004 data taken from the Family and Children Study conducted by NCSR on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions • For England, the estimated number of such families is 120,000

4. Analysis of data from the Family and Children Study • The analysis produced an estimate that 2% of the families in the survey could be described as multiply disadvantaged • This meant they had 5 or more of the following characteristics: • No parent in the family was working • The family lived in overcrowded housing • No parent had any qualifications • The mother had mental health problems • At least one parent had a long-standing limiting illness, disability or infirmity • The family income was less than 60% of median income • The family could not afford a number of food and clothing items

5. Analysis of data from the Family and Children Study • 2% applied to the population of English families yielded the likely prevalence estimate of 120,000 troubled families • This 120,000 is clearly an estimate computed to identify the scale of the problem of multiply deprived families needing an integrated approach to solve complex needs • There is no mention in the list of selection criteria to indicate troublesomeness to society

6. A false troublesomeness indicator (Joseph Fletcher)

7. A false troublesomeness predictor (Cook and Wainer)

8. Predicting troublesomeness • Fortunately we have some evidence about what kinds of family circumstance are more likely to produce troublesome adolescents and adults • Data from several longitudinal studies from across the world give us this information. • The most well-known world-wide and the one that is UK-based (The Cambridge Study of Delinquency Development) has identified these factors (Farrington 2001):

9. Factors which predict onset and persistence of delinquency 1. Antisocial child behaviour, including troublesomeness, dishonesty and aggressiveness 2. Hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention deficit, including poor concentration, restlessness, high daring (risk -taking) and psychomotor impulsivity 3. Low intelligence and low school achievement (but note Fletcher) 4. Family criminality, including convicted parents, delinquent older siblings and siblings with behaviour problems 5. Family poverty, including low family income, large family size and, and poor housing 6. Poor parenting, including harsh and authoritarian discipline, poor supervision, parental conflict and separation from parents

10. Factors which predict onset and persistence of delinquency • However, data from the same study also tells us: • Adolescent and adult troublesomeness is far from a guaranteed outcome of the existence of these antecedent factors • Firstly, adolescent and adult troublesomeness is not an inevitable consequence • Secondly the effects of the factors which can promote later troublesomeness can be and frequently are neutralised by other factors in the life of children • A high proportion of troublesome adults have negative factors in their background but most children having these factors in their childhood do not become troublesome adults.

11. Preventing troublesomeness • Moreover, there have been a number of attempts to intervene with troubled families which have yielded reasonably certain results about how the effects of adverse factors can be reduced and ameliorated through social action • Surestart was an example of intervention which was initially sadly not informed by evidence of what can be effective with troubled families • Its first major weakness was the focus on places likely to have an above average prevalence of the multiply disadvantaged rather than targeting those risk families exhibiting risk factors for future problematic outcomes. • This approach directly contradicts what had been learned from previous research • Its second weakness was to take a permissive approach to what kinds of intervention should be attempted in the face of very sound evidence about what types of intervention definitely worked and which did not

12. Preventing troublesomeness • At least the approach of Surestart was based upon recognition that intervention had to be early • All previous research showed: • Although there was yet to be agreement about precisely what mode of intervention is most likely to be effective • To have the greatest benefit you must target the families most at risk of producing troublesome adolescents and adults at the earliest possible time

13. The consequences • What we now have is an attempt to solve the problem of troublesome families by tackling a group of families whose characteristics do not match what we know about the circumstances which we know are most likely to promote the development of troublesomeness • Some factors are shared but the characteristics used to define the number of potential action targets (120,000) were chosen to enable a completely different problem to be solved. • This means that we are not likely to be engaged with those families we do actually need to tackle if we really mean to address troublesomeness • We will instead be engaging with families in great need of help to counter society’s negligence but who are viewed by key politicians “needing to sort themselves out” • We will also be defying what we know about what works by seeking to apply reactive rather than preventative remedies

14. The consequences • We do not even know if these can produce beneficial results as the validity of claims for the success of Family Intervention Projects are hotly contested. (Gregg CCJS 2012) • We are also channelling funding support on the explicit assumption that very quick effects can be produced and that we actually have information systems sophisticated enough to detect these • The proposals I have seen for creating these information systems are unbelievably optimistic • We are also saying that without proof of short-term effect, Government support will be withheld .

15. The consequences • To qualify for government assistance to cover already committed expenditure, approaches which appear to produce the required quick wins are most likely to be implemented • Who knows whether these are likely to produce sustained benefits? • Could they make things worse in terms of the situations they claim to address? • Remember the fiasco of other target-driven policy-making such as school league tables and NHS waiting times which have had serious deleterious effects upon actual quality of service (Royal Statistical Society Journals at various dates) • Remember how information systems to support target-based performance management systems have been so easily manipulated by middle managers

16. The consequences • Could families in need of action to counter poverty be made poorer? • Ruth Levitas correctly identifies that the 2% estimate is almost certainly a serious understatement of current prevalence of multiply disadvantaged families. She has suggested the true figure could be as high as 300,000 • So is there potential for making the poverty of the 120,00 worse and an even greater burden for the taxpayer? • Whilst ignoring up to 180,000 so that their situation also deteriorates and becomes even more expensive to handle • Are the 300,000 even more likely to produce troublesome offspring?

17. The consequences • Are the real potential progenitors of troublesome offspring hidden away among the 180,000? • Recently published analysis of data from the UK Millennium cohort study (Dickerson and Popli 2012) has produced evidence that persistent poverty is a crucial cause of poor cognitive development amongst children • Remember that cognitive impairments were 3 of the 6 factors implicated in production of criminality by the Cambridge Study • The other 3 were either poverty itself • OR family behaviours convincingly proven to be more prevalent when persistent poverty is present because it introduces unmanageable stress • Is anyone listening?