Troubled families, feral parents and the broken society: the argument for state intervention

Concerns about a lack of parental responsibility and family breakdown predates the 2011 riots and was particularly prominent during the previous decade manifest in the New Labour Government's policies to address anti-social behaviour (ASB) and social exclusion (Hancock and Mooney, Reference Hancock and Mooney2012). In the 1990s, when New Labour's ASB policy programme first emerged, it was within a wider context characterised by anxieties around high crime rates, new forms of disorder, including ‘white riots’ in ‘sink estates’, and a climate defined by a fear of a generation of ‘feral’ children (Gilling, Reference Gilling2007; McLaughlin, Reference McLaughlin, Hughes, McLaughlin and Muncie2002). A key source of disorder was presented as a minority of failing parents who did not know how, or were unwilling, to discharge their parental responsibilities, and who were therefore raising a generation of ill-behaved children. A key discourse that framed the New Labour narrative was Murray's theory of the underclass whereby ‘excluded’ populations are conceived of as morally deficient (Parr, Reference Parr2012; Murray, Reference Murray1990).

The influence of ‘underclass’ thinking has continued, perhaps even more explicitly, within the Coalition (2010–2015) and Conservative Party Governments' policies (2015–). The former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith regularly referred to a growing underclass characterised by ‘chaos and dysfunctionality’ within the wider context of ‘Broken Britain’. The notion of a Broken Britain was driven by the work of Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice and its Social Justice Policy Group which aims ‘to seek effective solutions to the poverty that blights parts of Britain’.Footnote ¹ The group's most prominent publication, Breakdown Britain (CSJ, 2006) identified five interrelated ‘drivers’ of poverty: economic dependence and worklessness, family breakdown (‘dad-lessness’ in particular), addiction, educational failure and indebtedness. Considerable attention was given to ‘family breakdown’, and, as Slater (Reference Slater2014) explains, the core principles of the ‘underclass’ thesis could be found within the definition of familial strife provided: ‘We have adopted an inclusive use of the term “family breakdown” which can be summed up in three key words: dissolution, dysfunction, and “dad-lessness”’ (CSJ, 2006: 29).

Prior to the Conservative party's election success in 2010, Cameron and Duncan Smith seized on a number of exceptional high profile crimes to evidence Britain's social and moral breakdown. The death of Baby Peter in North London in 2007, Karen Matthews’ conviction for kidnapping her nine-year-old daughter in Dewsbury in 2008 and the conviction of the ‘Edlington Brothers’ in Edlington in Doncaster 2009 were all framed within an underclass discourse in which moral disintegration was linked to single motherhood (Warner, Reference Warner2013; Hancock and Mooney, Reference Hancock and Mooney2012):

These narratives and assumptions formed the backdrop to the TFP which gathered pace after the 2011 riots, and which drew heavily on a social underclass discourse (Churchill, Reference Churchill2013). The blame for the riots was clearly placed upon the lone, working-class mother and fatherless families, what De Bendictis (Reference De Benedictis2012) has called a ‘feral parent’ discourse:

Through a focus on the failings of families and parents, a narrative of blame and individual deficit and culpability attributed the problems of rioting, not to structural issues of poverty and inequality, but to behavioural causes: ‘these riots were not about poverty’ but rather ‘about behaviour. People showing indifference to right and wrong. People with a twisted moral code. People with a complete absence of self-restraint’ (Cameron, Reference Cameron2011a). Indeed, Cameron has claimed that ‘poverty of parenting’ is of greater concern than material poverty: ‘differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by “confident and able” parents’ (Cameron, Reference Cameron2010; Gillies, Reference Gillies2011). Parents were seen to be lacking on the basis that they had learned their own parenting skills from their own inadequate parents. This represents a ‘cycle of deprivation’ approach (Welshman, Reference Welshman2008), which explains the inter-generational transmission and inheritance of deprivation of disadvantage in terms of parental deficit, located in the alleged faulty behaviours of the individuals and their families, reproduced from one generation to the next:

Linked to the inheritance of disadvantage, the welfare system – and in particular benefit dependency – was also identified as a source of malaise at the heart of the broken society (Arthur, Reference Arthur2015). Not only were families identified as a cost to government finances, but they were identified as a source of low aspiration inciting laziness (Crossley, Reference Crossley2015). Ironically therefore, although state intervention in welfare was cited as a primary cause of the ‘irresponsibility’ which ultimately produces troubled families (Hancock and Mooney, Reference Hancock and Mooney2012), this in turn warranted intrusive state intervention into their lives:

This narrative that located the ‘problem’ with the family, and thereby linked the need to fix the ‘broken society’ with a requirement to fix the ‘broken family’, legitimated and gave impetus to the government’s TFP. The aims of the TFP required the 152 upper tier local authorities in England to ‘turn around’ the lives of an estimated 120,000 families defined as having multiple problems by new or existing programmes over three years (April 2012 to May 2015). This brought with it a strengthening and deepening of state interventionist programmes in order to help families out ‘of this cycle of despair and give their children a better chance in the future’ (DCLG, 2014).

The primary target groups were highly specific – families with co-occurring problems of household welfare reliance; school exclusion, truancy and persistent school absence problems; and youth convictions or youth and/or adult anti-social behaviour problems (DCLG, 2012). A fourth category was introduced after the programme was launched to allow for discretion which enabled local authorities to include families they might be concerned about and who represent a ‘high cost to the public purse’. The 120,000 families ‘troubled families’ were framed as a homogeneous group that all share the same perceived failings; a ‘lack of resilience, insight and the capability to overcome problems’ (Lloyd et al., Reference Lloyd, Wollny and Gowland2011). The social and economic threats posed by the social underclass were emphasised. It was estimated that the 120,000 ‘troubled families’ cost the state £9 billion, with the vast majority of that amount spent on reactive services, responding to the families’ problems and the problems they caused for others (Hayden and Jenkins, Reference Hayden and Jenkins2014). The TFP was devised on a Payment by Results model, with local authorities paid an attachment fee for each ‘troubled family’ they worked with, and a further allocation of funding dependent on certain outcomes being met. In 2013, it was announced that the TFP would be extended to work with up to 400,000 more families, funded by £200 million from six government departments in 2015 to 2016. The scheme was also expanded in order to help children under five and families experiencing debt, drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence and mental and physical health problems.

Intervening in the lives of ‘troubled’ families: neoliberal statecraft

State intervention into family life is not new, but the TFP represents a highly interventionist and targeted phase of family policy, bringing with it a shift in the boundaries between family and the state. Families with children caught in the youth justice system or at the extreme end of the continuum of risk have always been subject to state intervention, but the UK has historically been considered either not to have a family policy as such or, at the most, to have implicit family policies. Until quite recently, there was broad consensus in the UK that, outside of the school, children were the responsibility of their individual parents (in practice, mainly mothers) (Featherstone, Reference Featherstone2006). With the advent of the New Labour government in 1997, family life and bringing up children was effectively re-positioned as a public rather than a private matter. There was an explicit concern with the family and parenting as a designated area of policy intervention. This shift was heavily influenced by efforts to address public concerns about crime and public order (Gillies, Reference Gillies2005a).

This highly interventionist agenda continued under the Coalition and now the Conservative governments, both of which relate the wellbeing of society to family practices, such that the word ‘parent’ itself is now more commonly viewed as an adjective or verb: Mothers and fathers ‘parent’ children and childrearing is re-framed as a job requiring particular knowhow and expertise (Gillies, Reference Gillies2011).

Theorising this interventionist agenda, there is a field of what might be called critical policy perspectives that have emerged to analyse and critique family policy more broadly and specifically the TFP together with its predecessor family intervention projects which were initiated under New Labour and which sought to address the ‘anti-social’ behaviour of the most ‘challenging’ families. Although different conceptual and theoretical frameworks have been used to help us understand and explain these policies, a core strand of this critical commentary more or less explicitly focuses on the effects of power, by placing the TFP within the context of the neoliberal state and capitalist class relations.

One such line of analysis has located family interventions, such as the TFP, as part of a broader project of welfare reform, which has its roots in a social investment rationale. Building on the underclass discourse which emphasises the cultural pathology of the poor, this rationale has a future-orientated perspective and services are provided to families. . . on the basis that the investment will pay off in the future, in terms of promoting labour market participation and individual employment opportunities, or, more negatively, in preventing disproportionate demands on service provision. This stands in contrast to a ‘here and now’ perspective, in which family and children's wellbeing are prioritised and parents (usually mothers) are seen as welfare subjects in their own right (Featherstone et al., Reference Featherstone, Broadhurst and Holt2012; Featherstone, Reference Featherstone2006; Lister, Reference Lister2006):

The TFP with its explicit emphasis on encouraging parents to become part of the ‘hard-working’ majority by finding paid employment can be interpreted as a social investment type of family project aimed at producing competent neoliberal subjects (Gillies, Reference Gillies, Wagg and Pilcher2014).

This investment in families, it is claimed, brings with it a requirement for families to conform to the moral values of the mainstream and to normative definitions of successful and competent parenting. According to critics, this amounts to a top-down, authoritarian programme of ‘re-training’ in which parents are encouraged to police themselves and self-discipline with the purpose of becoming conforming and productive such that any remaining ‘troubles’ are disregarded. From this perspective, the state acts as an ‘enabler’ rather than provider, with interventions aimed at encouraging parents to become sufficiently skilled in the ‘job’ of (neo-liberal) parenting (Smith, Reference Smith, Wasik and Santatzoglou2015; Gillies, Reference Gillies2005a, Reference Gillies2005b). The act of achieving this behaviour change is not through overt methods of control, but through negotiation and persuasion from key workers accepted by families as credible and encouraged to work ‘creatively’. These welfare workers – who, wittingly or not, comply with an oppressive state (Dobson, Reference Dobson2015) – are thought to be integral to a new spirit of capitalism (Garrett, Reference Garrett2012), which ultimately helps to sustain the capitalist order in times of austerity.

In this process, family needs become equated with personal deficiencies in their attitudes and ways of thinking, a process underpinned by stigmatisation and negative labelling (Gray, Reference Gray2009; Goldson and Jamieson, Reference Goldson and Jamieson2002). This overlooks how poor parenting more often than not is a result of poverty and a limited income, and the stress which accompanies these (La Placa and Corlyon, Reference La Placa and Corlyon2016). The TFP moves away from structural interventions – which might involve changing background conditions and material resources – towards those that are more behavioural (Daly and Bray, Reference Daly and Bray2015), and, in so doing individualises the problems families have and the difficulties parents might encounter bringing up their children. It is argued that interventions framed at the level of the individual and family merely seek to change parenting processes in order to counter poor social and physical environments.

Crossley (Reference Crossley2015) draws on both Bourdieu and Wacquant to explain the TFP as a neoliberal form of governing families:

Here, the TFP is conceived of as a state-led form of intrusive social control that is coercive and exclusionary. Crossley frames the programme as one that is designed and developed by the right hand of the state (what Bourdieu identifies as the fiscally minded, technocratic centre), with nationally set criteria and outcomes monitored from Whitehall, and funded by a Payment by Results model linked to the coalition government's ‘long-term economic plan’. It is understood as ideological within the neoliberal project, diverting attention away from the impact of government austerity measures and welfare reforms. It therefore serves to maintain class inequalities and works to shore up the capitalist system in times of swingeing budget cuts. According to Crossley (Reference Crossley2015), we should see the TFP as a punitive and muscular interventionist programme, and an integral part of aggressive neoliberal state-crafting. For Rodger, this also entails a blurring of the boundaries between social care and social control such that it produces criminalising agendas: chronic and deep-lying social problems often only become sites for state intervention if they are linked to crime and disorder issues (Rodger, Reference Rodger2008, Reference Rodger2012).

Furthermore, according to Tyler, the underclass discourse that emerged after the riots of 2011 should be understood as part of a much larger effort to procure consent for the rolling out of neo-liberal economic and social policies that punish the most socially marginal and economically disadvantaged (Tyler, Reference Tyler2013: 7).

Although different in their emphasis and theoretical lineage, in many of the critical accounts of the TFP and family interventions more generally, the dynamics of class and capital accumulation figure as the main forces driving policy, and the TFP is located as an example of the subordination of social policy to economic policy. Likewise, the role of a powerful coercive, punitive and disciplinary state is central in the analyses of these critics. In this type of analysis, the state is essentially a capitalist state, and the agencies involved in the TFP form part of a new statecraft, which, while claiming to act in the public interest, are understood to act primarily to secure the interests of capital (Stenson, Reference Stenson, Lewis, Gewirtz and Clarke2000).

An alternative vision of state power

The sorts of theoretical debates detailed above have been subject to challenge on the basis of a flawed conception of (state) power that does not attach sufficient importance to political agency. While critical commentators' analyses are not always grounded in the abstract and so recognise variation in the materialisation of the TFP at a local level, they do tend to downplay the importance of agency and choice and, in turn, the complexity of practice. As such, critical policy analyses tend to offer an overly structural and somewhat deterministic analysis of family policies in which the capitalist state and the market are accorded explanatory privilege (Hughes, Reference Hughes2007). Furthermore, with an overemphasis on global and generalised processes together with a lack of attention on struggle, negotiation and compromise, it is also argued that the approach fails to account for or provide an adequate framework for explaining and understanding local variation. Hughes (Reference Hughes2007) has referred to such work as a ‘radical totalitarian’ thesis and suggests that in failing to explore the policy making and implementation process, such work does not tell us about the tangible outcomes of actors’ intentions, and their ‘success’ or ‘failure’ when put into practice, overplaying the success of political projects. Moreover, the particular normative stance, that of ‘dystopianism’, almost removes the possibility that projects falling under the TFP banner can have positive effects for people, and is therefore, by implication, theoretically and politically foreclosed in its analysis and critique. Indeed, it is less common to see critical commentators engage explicitly in political arguments that address what may be both alternative and practical ways of addressing the ‘real’ problems associated with multiple disadvantages.

In response, Edwards and Hughes (Edwards and Hughes, Reference Edwards and Hughes2012, Reference Edwards, Hughes and Crawford2009; Hughes, Reference Hughes2007) place greater emphasis on the political agency of workers, and argue that the manner of local implementation is defined by ‘messy instabilities’ and unevenly developed practice. Giving voice to this, there is a growing body of empirical research that demonstrates how front-line workers do not straightforwardly implement regulatory social policy (Dobson, Reference Dobson2015; Prior and Barnes, Reference Prior and Barnes2011). Alternative perspectives on the TFP and its predecessors, family intervention projects, have been proffered (Davies, Reference Davies2015; Hayden and Jenkins, Reference Hayden, Jenkins and Davies2015; Sen, Reference Sen2016), some of which have focused specifically on the interplay between local and central forces. Researchers have, for instance, examined the importance of local policy interpretations in constructing meaningful practice within national problem figurations and policy frameworks; comparing the rhetoric and reality of intervention strategies, demonstrating evidence of local contestation and resistance (Ball et al., Reference Ball, Batty and Flint2016., Bond-Taylor, Reference Bond-Taylor2015a; Parr and Nixon, Reference Parr, Nixon, Barnes and Prior2009). Such work has revealed how many local authorities resist the language of the troubled families programme and avoid the term ‘troubled families’ in their local services (Hayden and Jenkins, Reference Hayden and Jenkins2014). It also draws attention to how the realisation of services is dependent on the professional identity and ‘habitus’ of front-line staff (Parr, Reference Parr and Davies2015a; Reference Parr2008). Flint (Reference Flint2012) has made the point that family intervention can have progressive as well as punitive dimensions and that this is, in part, associated with class, comportment and orientation of workers who are not always ciphers of middle class values. Parr (Reference Parr2015b) has also suggested that there has been a return to a ‘key worker’ model of support in which ‘the relationship’ and working in responsive, individualised ways is central. ‘Good’ relationships grounded in a person-centred practice is something long promoted by social workers, and there are examples of how ‘the relationship’ has had a beneficial impact on the emotional and psychological wellbeing of women. It would seem therefore that more traditional discourses of welfare and care have not been displaced absolutely for many of the social actors, professionals and practitioners working within the TFP (Bond-Taylor, Reference Bond-Taylor2015b).

Building on both structural policy analyses and empirical studies of practice, the theory-informed research agenda this article proposes is one that looks beyond a state-centred conception of the TFP. Underpinning this approach is what can be broadly referred to as critical realist work on the micro-dynamics of how political agency is negotiated beyond the central state's formal boundaries (Hughes, Reference Hughes2007; Edwards and Hughes, Reference Edwards and Hughes2012, Reference Edwards, Hughes and Crawford2009; Goldson and Hughes, Reference Goldson and Hughes2010). This perspective brings with it a different conception of power, and of state power in particular. Such an approach does not deny the power that state-agencies bring to bear on family projects, but recognises the inter-relational features of political power that underpin the implementation and operationalisation of TFP policy. In emphasising the local political agency of practitioners, this approach argues for the centrality of the notion of ‘power-dependence’ in understanding the relationships between the various (state and non-state) policy actors who have access to different types and levels of resources. For Hughes, this represents the central paradox of political power:

Here state power has a complex quality. Policy agendas, imperatives and discourses are understood to not be imposed top-down in an uncomplicated manner but interact with other dynamics via social relationships which include the contribution of those who are not so powerful. As Jupp (Reference Jupp2013: 173) suggests:

This approach can be situated within a broader body of work that has examined the policy implementation process. This work has drawn attention to the ‘implementation gap’ between policy and practice, and the way in which the central state is dependent on ‘street level bureaucrats’ or front-line practitioners who produce, modify and negate policy (Barrett, Reference Barrett2004; Lipsky, Reference Lipsky1980). Although not a self-proclaimed realist, for Clarke (Reference Clarke2004, Reference Clarke2007), this is about rescuing ‘the social’ –, defined by him as a field of shifting and contested relations and positions with a ‘life of its own’ – and thereby moving beyond state-centred approaches. The consequences of such policies, such as the TFP, cannot therefore be predicted or articulated within the straightforward narrative of understanding that seems to prevail within critical policy analyses (Simpson et al., Reference Simpson, Lumsden and McDowall Clark2015). This is particularly the case given the uneasy tension between localism and central control at the heart of the TFP, the effects of which are yet to be fully explored (Ball et al., Reference Ball, Batty and Flint2016). Indeed, despite a certain amount of central control and regulation, the programme exists in many different guises across local authorities within England (Hayden and Jenkins, Reference Hayden and Jenkins2014).

Understanding this more complex notion of state power means recognising how human agency, reasoning and choice lead to and ‘cause’ certain (unintended) consequences. This means paying attention to intention and meaning, and placing ‘the local’ at the centre of the analysis in a way that recognises the multiple, complex and contingent factors that generate social phenomena. Despite an emphasis on agency, this approach is not an interpretivist analysis offering specific perspectives and a ‘rich description’ of ‘lived experience’ (Oliver, Reference Oliver2012). While some are theoretically advanced, empirical studies of practice can be criticised for offering a narrow understanding of human power and agency and for not always embedding analysis in wider social contexts that also have causal significance (Somerville and Bengtsson, Reference Somerville and Bengtsson2002). Such approaches can sidestep questions of underlying social structures and thereby deny the primary importance of class, state or economic relations, instead concentrating, for instance, on networks of power-knowledge relations. In such analyses, it is not always clear what power is exercised for and also what any resistance may is exercised against (Joseph, Reference Joseph2004). These studies of practice can also offer uncomplicated ‘positive’ narratives of the ‘good welfare worker who overcomes or resists pernicious policy and practice contexts’ (Dobson, Reference Dobson2015). Related to this, there is not always a clear theoretical linkage from which to draw conclusions that have relevance beyond a particularistic case study.

Within a critical realist framework, studies of the TFP would maintain a dual focus on agency or individual action as well as social structure. Social structures refer to relatively enduring relationships between social positions and practices that constrain individuals’ capacities and are the enabling conditions for human action (Matthews, Reference Matthews2009). These structures (such as those of the state, neoliberal practices and discourses) contain powers, mechanisms or, more simply, ways of acting which work to produce outcomes that generate events and experiences. People consciously and unconsciously interact with, and thereby reproduce or transform, the social structures that enable and constrain their actions. That said, agency and structure cannot be conflated or collapsed into one another; they are two separate phenomena with relative autonomy. Human action can therefore also change society and is potentially liberating and able to refashion social relations in the direction of greater humanity, freedom and justice (Matthews, Reference Matthews2009). Related to this is the recognition that the social world is an open system defined by complexity; it is multi-causal and multi-layered (Oliver, Reference Oliver2012). This means that the concrete outcomes associated with the TFP will be conditioned by the uniqueness of geographical and historical context, what Sayer (Reference Sayer2000: 16) calls ‘contingent necessity’: ‘In our complex social world, multiple causal mechanisms, including the interpretation of each situation made by each individual, constantly interact with, negate and reinforce each other’ (Oliver, Reference Oliver2012: 374). As Matthews makes clear, state interventions are delivered by, and to, active subjects, and are open to interpretation and revision at every stage of the process, and can indeed fail at any one of a number of stages (Mathews, Reference Matthews2009).

Critical realist research therefore involves a kind of ‘vertical’ explanation whereby one mechanism or structure is shown to be the product of another. In this sense, theorising focuses not merely on the relationship between empirical observations. Rather, events and experiences (and actors’ analyses of these events and their actions) are linked to a ‘real’ domain made up of structures and their underlying generative mechanisms. Frauley (Reference Frauley2007) gives the example of relations of power which are ‘not directly observable but can be inferred to exist from their effects in the social world’ (Reference Clarke2007: 620). Explanations of this sort represent a logical extension for methodologies that encourage researchers to ask ‘what are the larger structural issues here and how do these events play into or effect what I am seeing?’ (Corbin and Strauss, 2008, in Oliver, Reference Oliver2012: 10). This also involves separating out the necessary and contingent, helping us to understand what must be from what might be the case and in turn enabling us to identify mechanisms in one context that may be recognisable in other contexts (Bengtsson, Reference Bengtsson2015).

To illustrate, in a critical realist study of the genesis of an intensive support project for families accused of anti-social behaviour, Parr (Reference Parr2009) highlights the complex combination of political and cultural mechanisms that gave rise to the policy ‘problem’ and the subsequent response within one particular locality. A number of necessary causal factors are identified including: the construction of a ‘convincing narrative’; the support of a coalition of actors to advance the problematisation; and the establishment of institutional practices. The project's ultimate terms of reference and internal structure, however, were contingently forged within the space of local power struggles aimed at making the project strategically necessary. In a bid to render the project politically viable, for instance, a discourse of ‘need’ was effectively colonised by one of behaviour control, and what might have been more straightforwardly a social policy was suffused with an agenda directed at addressing concerns about the containment of disorder, in part through the utilisation of enforcement-based technologies of control.

The TFP requires careful evaluation in order to identify the causal mechanisms in play as it is implemented. Therefore, in order to explain and understand the nature of state intervention in the lives of families deemed ‘troublesome’, questions need to be asked of the TFP about how wider economic and political developments and corresponding neo-liberal ideas and practices manifest in TFP services; how TFP practitioners contribute to the exercise of class power; and what it is about the TFP that reinforce class inequalities and socio-economic disadvantage. In addition, research needs to explore how the impact of services and projects is rooted in the culture of specific organisations and local authorities; and how the interests of different groups and actors with access to different resources are brought to bear on practice? Adequate explanations will take the agency of actors' seriously as well as the social context within which they operate.

Theory is of primary importance in this endeavour. The role of theory (Sayer, Reference Sayer1992, Reference Sayer2000) is to generate hypotheses about the nature of social structures, while identifying their effects is an empirical question, essentially entailing a movement between the concrete and the abstract. Sayer (Reference Sayer2000) suggests that although knowledge about relatively durable and pervasive social structures can be theorised independently of empirical research, social theory can rarely be applied to actual situations without supplementary empirical information.

The conceptual tools that critical policy analyses provide can be used to aid our understanding of the TFP. They are instructive in pointing towards general shifts in policy making at a national level for instance, and draw our attention to the distinctly punitive and stigmatising elements of family intervention policies that have an effect not only on practitioners and service users but also on wider society. Indeed, Levitas has claimed that the label ‘troubled families’ is part of a ‘discursive strategy’ which has been ‘successful in feeding vindictive attitudes to the poor’ (Levitas, Reference Levitas2012: 5) reflected in the media as a ‘shameless culture’ (Butler, Reference Butler2014). Critical perspectives also work to centre analytical attention on questions of underlying social structures and the importance of the state and economic relations. Indeed, we should be in no doubt about the considerable power that lies with the central state in imposing obligations on the TFP. Moreover, it is important to recognise wide-ranging social and economic reforms are needed to address material disadvantage and deepening inequalities that local resistance, on the part of key workers within the TFP, is unlikely to be able to address (Ball et al., Reference Ball, Batty and Flint2016). In isolation, however, these perspectives can frame the TFP as a unitary state-centred activity and tend to underplay its contested, complex and socially located nature. While critical policy analyses are not always characterised by an absence of empirical data, the latter are often analysed in order to identify how the state ‘bears down on’ families (Dobson, Reference Dobson2015). Even when grounded in the empirical, such an approach tends to channel the vision of the social researcher onto those practices that fit the problematisation and they do not provide an adequate framework for local variation (Edwards and Hughes, Reference Edwards, Hughes and Crawford2009). Sociological analysis of state intervention in the lives of families deemed ‘troublesome’ therefore needs to be adapted alongside empirical research that takes better account of the agency and choices of local actors, and the range of necessary and contingent determinants of the policy. The theoretical tools on which critical commentators draw, such as Crossley's use of Bourdieu, could enable such an actor-centred approach to the state (Arnholtz and Hammerslev, Reference Arnholtz and Hammerslev2013).

It is important to also note that the critical realist project is closely tied to conceptions of emancipation and the possibility of social improvement. When we think about the TFP, we must also recognise the necessity to proffer possibilities for progressive interventions and propose alternative visions (Matthews, Reference Matthews2009). The challenge is for academics to consider what is a credible alternative vision for policy with families with complex needs and what is an appropriate kind of state intervention. Is it the case that no state interventionism is the option? Is there a feasible and or desirable alternative to the TFP? And, if so, how might this be realised? Is there are any opportunities that the TFP policy offers or is it necessarily about the regulation and control of the already socially excluded?