Introduction

Drawing on an analytical framework developed by Uitermark (2005), this chapter considers the processes of translation that characterise antisocial behaviour (ASB) policy enactment. Scrutiny of the contested development of intensive family support projects (IFSPs), which more recently have been subsumed under the title Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) (Respect Taskforce, 2006), serves to highlight the way in which technologies of governance devised at the centre are linked to and dependent on activities, organisations and individuals operating in a local context. Scrutiny of the process by which FIPs emerged in England over the period 2003–07 provides an interesting illustration of local–central interactions in policy-making processes and exemplifies how local actors can modify the intended outcomes of national policy.

First established in 2003, IFSPs were designed to provide families who were homeless or at risk of eviction as a result of ASB with support to address the ‘root causes’ of disruptive behaviour, with the overarching aim of breaking cycles of disruptive behaviour and bringing families back into mainstream housing. The model of provision offered an alternative to punitive enforcement action and was based on the work of the Dundee Families Project (Dillane, 2001), in which families are provided with a range of services, including some or all of the following types of intervention:

• • floating outreach support to families in their existing homes;

• • outreach support in dispersed tenancies managed by the project;

• • support in core residential accommodation managed by the project, involving intensive daily contact and surveillance by project workers.

Initially, these projects were seen by local stakeholders to be a ‘high risk’ activity with the outcomes by no means certain. By 2004, only eight English local authorities, working closely with housing associations and charities, had set up FIPs, of which six agreed to participate in a threeyear (2004–07) government-funded study to evaluate their effectiveness in terms of costs, benefits and lessons for wider dissemination (Nixon et al, 2006, 2008). The empirical basis for the discussion that follows arises out of this evaluation, together with PhD research by one of the authors, carried out in one of these six case study locations.