Sadie Parr

Family Policy and the Governance of Anti-Social Behaviour in the UK: Women's Experiences of Intensive Family Support

In seeking to make sense of the role of intensive family support in the governance of anti-social behaviour, this paper focuses analytical attention on one case study project, the Family Support Service. It draws on interview material from five women whose experiences were tracked in repeat interviews over an 18-month period. The Family Support Service entailed intense surveillance and supervision of marginalised populations in domestic private spaces and did, therefore, have controlling and disciplinary qualities, particularly with regard to the families living in ‘core’ residential accommodation. Yet, in spite of this, the Family Support Service also contained a significant social welfare ethos based on finding long-term sustainable solutions to individuals’ problems, not least security of housing and income. This paper argues that while we must confront the worrying and disconcerting aspects of intensive family support, the intervention might be conducive to helping disadvantaged and troubled families access better lives. There is a need for further research, however, about how to achieve less punitive types of family intervention and, therefore, how progressive change for vulnerable families might be generated.

Confronting the reality of anti-social behaviour

A significant body of thinking around the UK Government’s anti-social behaviour (ASB) policy agenda draws its inspiration from post-Foucauldian governmentality theory. This is an indispensable body of work that has been particularly productive when grounded in empirical research studies which have critically analysed the way governmental rationalities are translated into policy ‘on the ground’. This article argues, however, that there is a need to move beyond ‘the social construction of reality’ thesis prevalent in this approach and direct our attention to ontologically focused questions. It contends that critical realism could effectively complement governmentality perspectives and deepen our understanding of ASB policy by enabling researchers to move beyond a focus on the ‘construction’ of ASB to the ‘reality’ of ASB.

Integrating critical realist and feminist methodologies: ethical and analytical dilemmas

This paper reflects on research carried out with a group of women receiving intensive family support aimed at addressing the cause of their family’s ‘anti-social behaviour’. The methodological approach to the research was underpinned by the philosophical principles of critical realism. It was also informed by the ethical and political concerns of feminist scholarship. The paper reports on the potential points of tension that arise between feminism and critical realism in empirical research. In particular, attention is centred on the process of trying to marry approaches which stress the central role of participants’ knowledge, particularly those who are ‘labelled’ and whose voices are not readily heard, with the principle that some accounts of ‘reality’ are better than others.

Intensive family casework with ‘problem families’: Past and present

In the United Kingdom during the Second World War, poor, working-class mothers and children evacuated as a result of the Blitz were subject to an intensive form of family casework delivered by Pacifist Service Units (later renamed Family Service Units). Some 60 years later, the New Labour Government championed the establishment of Family Intervention Projects to deal with a small number of families deemed to be the cause of anti-social behaviour. Each of these services emerged from very different social and economic contexts, yet this article seeks to demonstrate the continuities between the two forms of intervention that both have as their primary target the ‘problem family’. In so doing, this article raises new questions and ideas that are relevant to current debates about the role of intensive casework in the governance of the family.

The Role of Social Housing in the ‘Care’ and ‘Control’ of Tenants with Mental Health Problems

Social housing is at the intersection of two policy agendas, namely anti-social behaviour and community care. This means that tenants with mental ill-health might at once be defined as vulnerable and in need of support to enable them to live independently, but simultaneously their behaviour may be viewed as a threat to the safety of others serving to legitimatise disciplinary and punitive forms of intervention on the grounds of ‘difference’. This paper focuses on the role of housing professionals in the management of cases of ASB involving people with mental ill-health. It argues that housing practitioners are not adequately equipped to make judgements on the culpability of ‘perpetrators’ who have mental ill-health and ensure their response is appropriate. This raises questions about the training housing officers recieve, and more broadly, whether the competing policy aims of community care and ASB can be reconciled.

Conceptualising ‘The Relationship’ in Intensive Key Worker Support as a Therapeutic Medium

Across various welfare and justice systems, intensive key worker support is a model of working considered effective for individuals and families identified as having multiple and complex needs. The high profile ‘troubled families’ programme in England is the most recent prominent example of such a model. The key worker role is to assess an individual’s needs, carry out support planning, provide and/or co-ordinate the delivery of supportive interventions and complete care plan reviews. This requires the key worker to work on a one-to-one basis with individuals which, in turn, demands the ability to form effective relationships. In this paper and using evidence from a number of studies, I look at how the key worker-client relationship is developed and maintained. I examine the skills, processes and communication strategies that allow key workers to engage clients, build relationships and drive change. I also explore the notion that the key worker-service user relationship is itself a ‘therapeutic’ medium and is therefore a productive practice in its own right. The paper suggests that while key workers might not be trained therapists or counsellors, they might be equipped to address some emotional challenges that individuals with complex needs face and build therapeutic relationships with them.

Explaining and understanding state intervention into the lives of ‘troubled’ families

This article focuses attention on explaining and understanding state intervention into the lives of families deemed ‘troublesome’ with specific attention on the Troubled Families Programme. Launched in 2011, in part as a response to the London riots, the Troubled Families Programme represented an escalation and intensification of state intervention into the lives of families. Policy analyses have provided important perspectives on how we should explain and understand this government agenda as part of a process of neoliberal state crafting. This article offers a critical yet productive examination of these perspectives, arguing that their utility lies in how they can be employed, and therefore modified and adapted, in conjunction with studies of local practice which emphasise the messy realities of policy enactment and, with that, the possibility for contestation and challenge. Such an approach, based broadly on the tenets of critical realism, is founded on an alternative conception of state power, one that sees state power as having a more complex quality that is dependent on the agency of local actors.