Troubled Families troubles are not about the work

The headline conclusion of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research report into the £448m flagship government initiative was that the 120,000 families that had participated in the first phase had derived little or no benefit. In other words, it was a colossal waste of public money (see Analysis). Unsurprisingly, ministers and civil servants have jumped to its defence, claiming the research findings do not give a fair assessment of the programme's merits. They may have a point - local government and children's services leaders certainly think so.

Association of Directors of Children's Services president Dave Hill says the programme has helped galvanise services delivered by a host of agencies to work together to tackle entrenched social problems. Meanwhile, the Local Government Association highlights the role of key workers in co-ordinating this work, in addition to how the scheme has transformed how local services use data to understand need and improve interventions. The research, however, does not dispute that good work is going on under the aegis of the programme; rather, that it cannot be proved it was responsible for sustainable change in families' lives. The fact councils received payments for achieving targets with 116,000 families prompted the government to proclaim they had been "turned around". The research shows it was a claim too far, conflating inputs with outcomes.