Troublemakers: The Construction of "Troubled Families" as a Social Problem

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in the wake of the 2011 riots conflated poor and disadvantaged families with anti-social and criminal families. The programme aimed to ‘turn around’ the lives of the country’s most ‘troubled families’, at a time of austerity and wide-ranging welfare reforms which hit the poorest families hardest.

This detailed, authoritative and critical account reveals the inconsistencies and contradictions within the programme, and issues of deceit and malpractice in its operation. It shows how this core government policy has stigmatised the families it claimed to support.

Paving the way for a government to fulfil its responsibility to families, rather than condemning them, this book will empower local authority workers, policy-makers and researchers, and anyone interested in social justice, to challenge damaging, aggressive neoliberal statecraft.

Dr Stephen Crossley is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Northumbria University. He completed his ESRC-funded PhD on ‘troubled families’ at the University of Durham. He is the author of 'In Their Place: The Imagined Geographies of Poverty' (Pluto Press, 2017). Prior to entering academia, he worked for local authorities and voluntary sector organisations in the North East of England in youth, community development and neighbourhood management roles. He can be followed on Twitter at @akindoftrouble