Jason Lowther

In this blog last week I outlined the roller coaster trajectory of the Troubled Families Programme in the media, from saviour of all England’s most “troubled families”, to a wasteful and failed £1bn vanity project in under five months.  This despite independent evaluators finding the programme has radically transformed support for these families, and the families themselves saying that it has worked for them.

In most government evaluations, that is where the story would stop.  Yet another tremendously successful project from Whitehall.  But the DCLG (with a little encouragement from Treasury) were much braver.  They wanted to know how many of these improvements would have happened in any case, even without the Troubled Families Programme (TFP).  This is a dangerous question to ask.  And quite a tough one to answer.

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Jason Lowther

Whatever happened to the Troubled Families Programme (TFP)?  Three weeks before last year’s general election purdah period, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles heralded the Government’s three year programme as “a triumph…[that will] turn around the lives 120,000 of this country’s hardest to help families…[saving] the taxpayer over a billion pounds”.  After the election, Prime Minister Cameron announced the success rate had been 99% which had “saved as much as £1.2 billion in the process”.

Fast forward a few months and the headlines have taken a rapid reverse:

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