Introduction

The TFP was established specifically to ‘turn around’ the lives of the 120,000 troublesome and anti-social families that could be identified using the government's official criteria, with the government promoting the family intervention model as the best way of doing this. It was not long, however, before slippages from this original narrative began to emerge and it became clear during Phase 1 that many local authorities were struggling to find the requisite number of ‘troubled families’ in their area (Wiggins, 2012). Many were also choosing to work with families using existing universal services, and not necessarily rushing to adopt an intensive family intervention approach. It also was not long before it was announced that the programme would seek to work with an additional 400,000 families, once the original 120,000 had been dealt with. These families had been identified using new research and the ‘massive expansion’ (DCLG, 2013b) of the programme would also see new and expanded criteria introduced for the 400,000 extra families. A new approach to the PbR element of the programme was also announced for the second phase, one that required families to demonstrate ‘significant and sustained progress’ in order for local authorities to receive additional funding. Following intense criticism of the claims of success surrounding the TFP, the second phase of the programme operated out of the public limelight in its early stages before, in early 2017, it was announced that the programme was in line for a ‘reboot’ (Savage, 2017). In April 2017, the ‘next phase’ of the ‘evolution’ of TFP was announced, including a new focus on ‘workless families’ within the TFP and a further review of the PbR mechanism.