Abstract
Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) have received considerable political and media attention for their role in reducing anti-social behaviour within our most ‘troubled’ UK families. Although there has been some reference to FIPs within the academic literature, little has been concentrated on how they work in practice. In this study, we worked with two FIPs within Leicester City, focusing on keyworker’s perceptions of ‘successful intervention’. Keyworkers believe that the work they do enables families to take responsibility for their behaviour, while allowing them to learn new, more adaptive ways of coping with the stresses and strains of living in deprived circumstances. We analysed this within the context of ‘empowerment’ and ‘family resilience’. Although the current government has promised continued support for FIPs, we conclude that more research is needed to establish ‘what works’, for whom and under what circumstances. Although FIPs clearly do not work for all families, the consistent, long-term support provided by the FIP team can facilitate some families to make sustainable changes within their lives. It is clearly a welcome advance on enforcement-only approaches to tackling anti-social behaviour.
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Notes
There are two FIPs within the Leicester City area, the structure and implementation of which are potentially unique in that they are two separate projects running in tandem, each delivered by different charitable organisations. They are therefore independent from the City Council.
It is important to state that this current study was not primarily interested in ‘hard data’ and ‘hard outcomes’ (such as indicators of criminal activity and anti-social behaviour, neighbour/community complaints to local authorities, police and other agency involvement and so on that may indicate improved behaviour), as this has been extensively reported in the evaluation literature (see, for example, Nixon et al, 2006, 2008; White et al, 2008). We were interested in ‘unpacking’ the work that the keyworkers do, and listening to their perceptions on successful intervention.
That is not to say that local authority interventions are necessarily coercive, as they do also offer a range of voluntary services and programmes that individuals can choose to ‘opt into’, and offer impartial guidance to families seeking support. We are not making a comparison here with statutory versus non-statutory services as a whole. However, keyworkers in this research did see their relative independence from the local authorities as an advantage (as any sanctions the families are facing are not being directly imposed by them).
More mainstream interventions are much more short term, as mainstream services tend to be involved with the families only for the duration of a particular ‘crisis’. For example, a social worker (with their much heavier caseload) may check on families periodically and provide ‘follow-ups’ after initial involvement, but they would not be able to offer either the long-term, or the intensive, service of a FIP keyworker. FIP contact with a family (especially during the early stages of intervention) is often on a daily basis, and will be based on family needs. Keyworkers are often ‘on call’ out-of-hours, on weekends and Bank Holidays, as these are often when their families need them most. Frequency and intensity of contact declines only with prior family agreement, and only when everyone feels they are ready.
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Hodgkinson, S., Jones, D. The use of family intervention projects to deal with anti-social behaviour: A preliminary study of keyworker perceptions. Crime Prev Community Saf 15, 278–291 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2013.8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpcs.2013.8