Already a subscriber? Log in
These Family Intervention Projects (as they used to be called) started at grassroots level in the 1990s, and were picked up by Tony Blair towards the end of his premiership. Gordon Brown was initially less enthusiastic, but after a year or so came round to the same view, and rapidly expanded their roll-out. By the time of the 2010 election they were reaching around 3,500 families a year, with impressive results.
What Conservative ministers are now doing is expanding this approach again, while saying they believe it can be done more cheaply per family, and more effectively, by using payment-by-results – and with a greater emphasis on work as a route out of poverty. This makes sense: pragmatically continuing a policy which was working pretty well, even if they can’t bring themselves to admit it, while giving it a distinctively Conservative twist. I have my doubts about the specifics of the changes they are making, which I rehearsed here. I hope I’m wrong: if it can be done more cheaply, that will enable scarce public funding to go much further, which would be hugely welcome.
The real shame is that two years have been wasted. If ministers had piloted these changes in a few Family Intervention Projects two years ago, they would have known by now if they were working. Instead, it remains a leap of faith – and potentially a very expensive one. It will also be a shame if the divisive rhetoric employed by Conservative ministers – and the unfortunate tendency to conflate families suffering from poverty and ‘multiple disadvantage’ (the real definition behind the 120,000 figure which ministers keep parroting) with families responsible for anti-social behaviour and other trouble in their neighbourhood – turns the Left against these programmes. Many on the Left have inferred something more than carelessness behind this conflation: the old Right-wing prejudice that poor families are responsible for their plight; or, as some have put it, a calculated attempt to ‘demonise’ the poor.
These are legitimate concerns, but some on the Left have gone further, attacking the whole idea of intensive, assertive interventions as ‘stigmatising’ families, and arguing that the answer is more Sure Start centres. Casey’s follow-up yesterday – in which she suggested that some ‘troubled families’ are having too many children for their own good (and that of their children) – provoked predictable howls about the return of eugenics. These were the same arguments and attitudes relied on by the Left (as well as by the majority of Whitehall officials working on education and families) which helped prevent Labour making any real progress with these families between 1997 and 2006. The Left should not allow itself to be provoked into retreating into this comfort zone. There is a serious problem here which needs a long-term solution. That means both main parties being willing to learn from experience, and from each other – not falling back on lazy assumptions, of Right or Left.
Matt Cavanagh is a visiting fellow at IPPR.
Because you read about crime
Also by Matt Cavanagh
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in