Troubled families: misrepresenting poverty

Durham 15 March 2013

Ruth LevitasUniversity of Bristol

Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK

Main Objectives

• To improve the measurement of poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living

• To assess changes in poverty and social exclusion in the UK

• To conduct policy-relevant analyses of poverty and social exclusion

website: www.poverty.ac.uk

PSE 2012: main questions

• What are the best methods for measuring poverty, deprivation, social exclusion and standard of living?

• How are the different dimensions of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion related?

• What is the current extent and nature of poverty and how has it changed?

• What policies best address these problems?

Troubled families or ‘neighbours from hell’

That’s why today, I want to talk about troubled families. Let me be clear what I mean by this phrase. Officialdom might call them ‘families with multiple disadvantages’. Some in

the press might call them ‘neighbours from hell’. Whatever you call them, we’ve known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society. Drug addiction. Alcohol abuse. Crime. A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that

cascades through generations. We’ve always known that these families cost an extraordinary amount of money…but now we’ve come up the actual figures. Last year the state

spent an estimated £9 billion on just 120,000 families…that is around £75,000 per family.

David Cameron December 2011

Troubled families cause trouble

‘120,000 families are a big problem for this country. If you live near one you know very well who they are. And local services like police, health and schools also know who

they are, because they spend a disproportionate amount of time and money dealing with them. These families are both troubled and causing trouble. We want to get to the

bottom of their problems and resolve them – for their own good, and for the good of their communities.

Councils will now be asked to look to identify actual families, based on factors such as truanting, antisocial

behaviour and cost to public services.’

Eric Pickles

Social Justice Strategy

‘the Government recently identified a group of 120,000 troubled families whose lives are so chaotic they cost the Government some £9 billion in the last year alone’.

Iain Duncan Smith, Foreword,

Department for Work and Pensions (2012) Social Justice: transforming lives,

Social Justice Strategy

‘we estimate that there are 120,000 families living particularly troubled and chaotic lives. These

families are the subject of significant government intervention – with some £9 billion spent on this particular group in the last year alone – and can

cause serious problems for their local communities through crime and antisocial

behaviour.’

Department for Work and Pensions (2012) Social Justice: transforming lives,

Troubled Families ProgrammeAimed at households that:

• Are involved in crime and anti-social behaviour;

• Have children not in school;

• Have an adult on out-of-work benefits;

• Cause high costs to the public purse.

Troubled Families Programme

• Estimated 120,000 families distributed to Local Authorities as target figures.

• £4000 of estimated £10,000 cost per family for ‘turning family round’

Issues

• Numbers: the 120,000

• Costs: the £9 billion

• Ethics: the Casey Report

• Numbers: poverty and inequality

120,000 troubled families?

• No parent in the family is in work;• Family lives in overcrowded housing;• No parent has any qualifications;• Mother has mental health problems;• At least one parent has a long-standing limiting

illness, disability or infirmity;• Family has low income (below 60% of median

income);• Family cannot afford a number of food and

clothing items.

Issues

• Numbers: the 120,000

• Costs: the £9 billion

• Ethics: the Casey Report

• Numbers: poverty and inequality

Those £9bn pounds …

The Lies we tell Ourselves

This is because we have a culture which allows us to tell lies in public life.

Paul Morrison, Methodist Church

Issues

• Numbers: the 120,000

• Costs: the £9 billion

• Ethics: the Casey Report

• Numbers: poverty and inequality

The Casey Report: Listening to Troubled Families

• Large families – especially women with children with different fathers.

• Informed consent

• Is it research?

‘Many have large families and keep having children, often with different fathers, even if they are struggling to cope

with the children they already have’.

‘It's not just that you are a family and your kids are antisocial, and it's not just that you started having five to 10 children from the age of 16. It's every single problem going ... they are responsible for a good number of them and some of [the families] feel they don't need help from

anyone’.

Louise Casey

(NOT) Listening to Troubled Families

(NOT) Listening to Troubled Families

The most striking common theme that families described was the history of sexual and physical abuse, often going back generations; the involvement of the care system in the lives of both parents and their children,

parents having children very young, those parents being involved in violent relationships, and the children going on to have behavioural problems, leading to exclusion

from school, anti-social behaviour and crime. … Violence appears in many cases to be endemic – not just

domestic violence between parents but violence between siblings, between parent and child, outside the house

and inside the house.

Louise Casey

Issues

• Numbers: the 120,000

• Costs: the £9 billion

• Ethics: the Casey Report

• Numbers: poverty and inequality

120,000 troubled families?

• No parent in the family is in work;• Family lives in overcrowded housing;• No parent has any qualifications;• Mother has mental health problems;• At least one parent has a long-standing limiting

illness, disability or infirmity;• Family has low income (below 60% of median

income);• Family cannot afford a number of food and

clothing items.

Estimating Trends

In the Eye of the Storm: Britain’s forgottenchildren and families

A research report for Action for Children,The Children’s Society and NSPCC

Howard Reed, Landman Economics, June 2012

In the Eye of the Storm 1Between 2008 and 2015 it is estimated that the number of families with five

or more vulnerabilities will increase from 130,000 to 150,000 – an increase of just under 15 percent.

The number of children living in families with five or more vulnerabilities is set to rise by 55,000 to 365,000, an increase of around 17 percent.

Taking a slightly wider definition of vulnerability, the number of children living in families with four or more vulnerabilities is set to rise from 885,000 in 2008 to just over one million by 2010, an increase of 13

percent.

Particularly worrying is the projected increase in the number of children living in extremely vulnerable families – families with six or seven

different risk factors. Although currently fewer than 50,000, the number of children living in extremely vulnerable families is set to almost double

by 2015, to 96,000.

Howard Reed, June 2012

In the Eye of the Storm 2Finally, combining the changes to the tax and benefit system with the other spending cuts, families with five or more vulnerabilities lose approximately £3,000 per year (in April 2012 prices) from the overall fiscal ‘package’ by 2015 compared to 2010. This represents a decrease in

total living standards (net income plus the value of public services received) of around 7 percent. Even if the £448

million per year allocated to “troubled” families by the Government in 2011 were targeted solely on families

with five or more vulnerabilities using the Cabinet Office’s original definition, the money allocated per family

would only just offset the losses which vulnerable families are suffering from the rest of the fiscal package.

Howard Reed, 2012

In the Eye of the Storm 3

Putting all of this together, it is clear that by 2015 there will be significantly more vulnerable families than there were in 2010. They will be significantly worse off in terms of

disposable income than they were in 2010 and the public spending cuts will have hit them particularly hard

compared with the population at large. Furthermore, the number of children living in families with five or more vulnerabilities is predicted to increase by around 17

percent and the number of extremely vulnerable children (in families with six or seven vulnerabilities) will almost double. On this reading of the situation, the outlook for

vulnerable families over the next three years – and beyond – should be of major concern to policymakers.

Howard Reed, 2012

Is austerity really necessary?

The viral video

New Economics Foundation

www.nef.org.uk

More Information

visit www.poverty.ac.uk

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7.30 March 28