Troubled Families programme had "no impact" on outcomes: research

Researchers have been unable to find consistent evidence that the first phase of the Troubled Families Programme has had any significant or systematic impact, it has been revealed.

However, ministers have reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to the programme, which was launched in April 2012 with the objective of ‘turning around’ the lives of 120,000 of the most ‘troubled families’ in England. The first phase had a budget of £448m, and the programme has since been expanded.

The National Institute for Economic and Social Research report examined a wide range of outcomes, covering the programme’s key objectives - employment, benefit receipt, school attendance, safeguarding and child welfare.

The researchers found that the majority of impact estimates were “statistically insignificant, with a very small number of positive or negative results”.

The NIESR described the main overall achievements of the first phase to include:

• The national ‘spotlight’ at a policy level, coupled with the additional Government funding, "helped to raise the profile of family intervention, and assisted Troubled Families Coordinators in achieving strategic buy-in at a local level".
• The process evaluation found "widespread evidence of local services and systems transformation, at a time when most local authority budgets were undergoing retraction. The timing of the programme meant that family intervention provided a test bed for new models of service development and commissioning in many local areas."
• The programme played "a key role" in boosting local capacity for family intervention, and expanding the workforce – especially within those areas moving from a low baseline position. This was despite some redeployment of existing staff.
• The auditing requirements of the programme were instrumental in raising the quality and capacity of local data management systems. The programme helped to set a multi-agency agenda for the identification and tracking of families in some areas.
• There were signs that the Development Agreement between DCLG and DWP had accelerated the employability dimensions of the programme; "going some way towards embedding this expertise within local teams, and paving the way for better joint working with Jobcentre Plus at a local level."
• The evaluation found some beacons of good practice, demonstrating the hallmarks of FIPs (family intervention projects) – "workers observed a real step change in practice, regarding the time and space for assertive key working, and benefited from strong models of supervision".
• The impact evaluation identified statistically significant impacts on families’ satisfaction with the service; their confidence, and optimism about being able to cope in the future, compared with a matched comparison group of families.
• The programme achieved statistically significant impacts on families’ self-reported financial capability, "although not on their overall (self-reported) levels of debt".

The evaluation also identified a number of areas where the phase one programme had appeared "not to have been as successful". These were as follows:

• The evaluation encountered wide variations in local practice. "Although some of these reflected inevitable differences according to local authority size, structure, and demographics, there was nonetheless a stark contrast in how local teams recruited and trained their workers; set caseload sizes, and exited their families. There was a perceived need for more standardised training, quality assurance, and CPD."
• Whilst the evaluation found a good deal of consensus regarding the role and value of the ‘key worker’, there was more limited evidence for the efficacy of the interventions offered to families. "In particular, the therapeutic dimensions of the programme (mental health, DA/DV and parenting) were not always clearly defined."
• There appeared to have been relatively little progress in addressing the health issues for families that were documented within the FIPs, although this issue had been acknowledged at a policy level and was factored in to the expanded programme.
• It was questionable whether deep and sustained improvements were achieved to partnership working at a local level, beyond individual examples of good practice. "The evaluation encountered variable levels of engagement by partner organisations (especially so health and adult social care). Improvements in multi-agency planning and data sharing at a strategic level to ensure the implementation of the PbR (Payment by results) framework had not always translated into benefits at an operational level."
• There was mixed evidence regarding the extent to which scaling-up had been achieved without sacrificing some level of quality of family intervention practice. "This has potential implications for the expanded programme, given that it involves local authorities attempting to mainstream their approach. Moreover, the requirement to work with greater numbers of families on reduced funding poses a risk of ‘diluting’ the intervention."
• The PbR financial framework and targets were contentious in many local areas and were thought to have resulted in certain perverse incentives.

On the key finding of there being no impact on the key outcomes attributable to the programme, the NIESR report stressed that large scale impacts would not necessarily be anticipated. “Whilst the Troubled Families Programme was underpinned by a national framework and outcomes, it was managed through 152 local change programmes, with considerable discretion afforded to local authorities in how they identified, prioritised and worked with their families. In many respects, therefore, the programme was always going to pose challenges in terms of generating measurable impact.”

In an article published prior to publication of the research Communities Minister Lord Bourne said: “When it was launched in 2012, the programme was the first national and systematic attempt to help families with multiple problems to improve their lives. In the past, those families had been failed by public services which didn’t work together and only dealt with one problem of one member of the household.

“For example, Jobcentre staff did not spot or deal with signs of depression and domestic abuse when, in fact, it was these problems which meant a mother did not have the confidence to get a job.

“In contrast, the Troubled Families Programme sought to help a whole family with all of its problems, using a keyworker as one point of contact to help a family get back on its feet and move forward.”

The minister added: “We know that more than 116,000 of the families who participated in the first phase of the programme have seen significant improvements in their lives, with children back in school for a year, reduced youth crime and anti-social behaviour, and adults holding down a job.

“We also know the programme transformed the way services responded to the most complex families. Different agencies – the police, NHS, social services, employment advisers – worked together to help the family instead of pushing them from pillar to post.”

Lord Bourne insisted that the Government was confident would save money for the taxpayer, and pointed to the programme’s popularity with those councils that run it.

“Of course, there will always be lessons to learn. As a pioneering programme, working with complex families in this way and on this scale for the first time, we never expected to get everything right and have never claimed to have done so,” he said.

The minister added that the Government would “continue to help and support even more families who are just about managing, or not managing at all”.