Troubled Families … Troubled Society?

In the warm after-glow of Olympic glory it might seem churlish to take issue with Louise Casey’s report.  In her introduction she starts by reminding us that, in December 2010, “the Prime Minister set out that he wanted troubled families’ lives to be turned around by the end of this Parliament” and to fund this work £448 million has been found across government.  One can only applaud a Prime Minister who has such a desire and a government that is prepared to make such a commitment.  But it’s worth looking a little closer at what’s involved.

Forty years ago I started working in a therapeutic community that had previously been a senior approved school.  We found that four to five years of ‘milieu therapy’ enabled the great majority of the community’s young residents to turn their lives around.  The five figure cost for each resident was significantly less than the cost of imprisoning them had the community not existed.  So Mr Cameron might be indulging in a degree of wishful thinking if he thinks that a “troubled family” can manage a similar change in the three years that are left of this Parliament, and at a cost of less than £4000 per family.  But good luck.

Let’s set that aside, and let’s not worry too much whether there are only 120,000 troubled families in need of help.  I want to take a closer look at Ms Casey’s report.  Needless to say this will be from the perspective of someone who has worked for a number of years with young fathers-to-be.

The body of the report contains 16 case studies.  Those of us who have worked with ‘disturbed and disturbing’ young people won’t find anything there to surprise us.  Indeed we were familiar with the same sad litany of experiences forty years ago.  That was at a time when “a short sharp shock” was in vogue.  At least we’ve moved on a bit since then.  But it’s instructive to note that three-quarters of the interviews were with young women only.  Only three were with couples and one with a father.

After the interviews comes an analysis of “what the interviews tell us.”  This appears under fourteen headings.  One of these is “Teenage mothers”.  No discussion about the issues facing young fathers.  They remain invisible.  It’s not that fathers don’t get a look-in.  “The majority of the families described absent biological fathers and fathers taking a very casual approach to parenthood and relationships.  For example, as soon as the relationship between the parents breaks down, the father disappears from the family never to be heard of again … the fathers are rarely around ... The influence of male partners was often negative”.

Research evidence is clear about the importance of fathers in the healthy emotional and social development of their children, not that we should require such evidence to convince us of a self-evident fact.  But I can’t see how the cross-departmental programme being driven forward by Eric Pickles’ Department of Communities & Local Government will have any impact on the fathers of troubled families if they “are rarely around".  Instead the programme begins to look like an attempt at a sticking plaster cure for a problem that has much deeper roots in modern British society.  Of course we’ve always been better at advocating cures, and paying for them – remember those short sharp shocks – rather than engaging in an adult debate about underlying causes and working towards the prevention of problems before they arise.  Last year’s riots cost at least £133 million (The Guardian, 6 September 2011).  How much better to have spent that money on preventative strategies in advance rather than on paying for the aftermath.

You won’t be surprised if I suggest that engaging with young fathers-to-be might be one such preventative strategy.  In a cohort of young men with whom I worked in recent years, two-thirds of the relationships broke down within two years of the birth of their children.  Yet in almost all cases they remained in contact with their partners and had continuing involvement with their children.  Mentoring along the lines of Brighton’s Band of Brothers, whose mentors are all volunteers, is another.   Which reminds me of the Olympics and the Games Making volunteers, the Big Society in action.  240,000 people applied to be Games Makers, twice as many as Ms Casey’s 120,000 troubled families.  The spirit of volunteering is alive and kicking, and this despite the cynicism and anger engendered by banking meltdown and misdemeanours, seven figure ‘compensation’ packages, the bonus culture, and endemic tax-dodging.  Perhaps there’s a message here for policy-makers who not only want to inspire a generation but recognise the need to engage with it too.  That warm after-glow might take longer to dissipate.