Speaking to a fringe event on family wellbeing at the Conservative Party Conference, Helen Dent argued that the 120,000 troubled families often cited by government must not be seen as a homogenous group.
She suggested that the term "troubled families" usually refers to two different groups of families that need very different services – families in which antisocial behaviour and youth offending are problems and families in which parents are struggling to look after their children.
"Family intervention projects (FIPs) have a role to play for families where children are going off the rails and terrorising communities," Dent said. "But within those 120,000 families there are those in which the parents have mental health problems, learning difficulties or chronic illness. Their children, by and large, are not terrorising communities, but they are very sad and their outcomes are very poor in terms of mental wellbeing and achievement at school."
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