The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in the wake of the 2011 riots conflated poor and disadvantaged families with anti-social and criminal families. The programme aimed to 'turn around' the lives of the country's most 'troubled families', at a time of austerity and wide-ranging welfare reforms which hit the poorest families hardest. This detailed, authoritative and critical account reveals the inconsistencies and contradictions within the programme, and issues of deceit and malpractice in its operation. It shows how this core government policy has stigmatised the families it claimed to support. Paving the way for a government to fulfil its responsibility to families, rather than condemning them, this book will empower local authority workers, policy-makers and researchers, and anyone interested in social justice, to challenge damaging, aggressive neoliberal statecraft.

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in the wake of the 2011 riots conflated poor and disadvantaged families with anti-social and criminal families. The programme aimed to 'turn around' the lives of the country's most 'troubled families', at a time of austerity and wide-ranging welfare reforms which hit the poorest families hardest. This detailed, authoritative and critical account reveals the inconsistencies and contradictions within the programme, and issues of deceit and malpractice in its operation. It shows how this core government policy has stigmatised the families it claimed to support. Paving the way for a government to fulfil its responsibility to families, rather than condemning them, this book will empower local authority workers, policy-makers and researchers, and anyone interested in social justice, to challenge damaging, aggressive neoliberal statecraft.

What determines the course of our lives? Chance or destiny?

On Midsummer s Day, 1982, three-year-old Azalea Ives is found alone at a seaside fairground.

One year later, her mother s body washes up on a beach her link to Azalea unnoticed.

On Midsummer s Day, 1992, her adoptive parents are killed in a Ugandan rebel uprising; Azalea is narrowly rescued by a figure from her past.

Terrified that she, too, will meet her fate on Midsummer s Day, Azalea approaches Thomas Post, an expert in debunking coincidences. Azalea s past, he insists, is random but as Midsummer s Day approaches, he worries that she may bring fate upon herself.