The narratives of ‘troubled families’- a troubling context

The discourse around families perceived to have complex needs has developed at a policy level, very much reinforced by media representations. The notion of the troubled family has recently been generated as a result of Coalition Government policy-this controversial construction of particular families has been explicitly linked with the involvement of the welfare state. Within this context, the Governments Troubled Families tsar, Louise Casey has published an extensive outline of the policy, including the stories of a number of such families derived from interviews. The participants accounts present a picture of some of the complex and long standing issues they face. As a part of PhD research, literature was accessed exploring the notion of troubled and complex families. Exploring these ideas in previous decades shows a continuity in the construction of this idea. This paper seeks to show the continuity in the ideas about such families who present with complex problems, whilst highlighting the new, more controversial version of these ideas. The stories of families who are the subject of intensive family intervention in Casey’s report are thus set in the context of this more individualised construction of family behaviour and will arguably be perceived and interpreted in this new context