The policy rhetoric of the UK Coalition government's ‘Troubled Families’ initiative, and that of New Labour's earlier Respect Agenda, share an emphasis on families’ responsibilities, or rather their irresponsibility, and their financial costs to society. Giving children a chance of a better life coincides, in this framing, with reducing costs for the taxpayer. The research reported here was based on a national study of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), funded by the UK government between 2009 and 2012, beginning under New Labour, continuing over a period when the FIP programme was discontinued, and ending after the Troubled Families programme had begun. The research involved over 100 in-depth interviews with stakeholders, including service managers, family key workers, and caregivers and children in twenty families, to consider critical questions about the kinds of trouble that families experience in their lives, and how they are recognised in the policy and practice of intensive family intervention.

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