The first annual lecture of the Journal of Social Policy and Society was hosted at the University of Sheffield on 22 March 2017, and saw engaging talks from two academics in the field of social policy.

Sponsored by Cambridge University Press, in association with the Social Policy Research Cluster in the Department of Sociological Studies, the lecture on the theme of ‘Troubled Families’ was given jointly by Dr Michael Lambert, Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow in Early Childhood Studies at Liverpool Hope University, and Dr Stephen Crossley, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Northumbria University.

Michael opened the lecture by discussing the Troubled Families Programme and using the city of Sheffield as a case study to explore how ‘problem families’ were defined and managed by a host of social, welfare, health and other services during the ‘golden age’ of the welfare state from 1945 to 1974.

Stephen Crossley went on to examine the development of the Troubled Families Programme by drawing on writing around alchemy, myth, magic and statecraft. Stephen concluded with a discussion of the continuing widespread belief in ‘troubled families’, even amongst practitioners and researchers.

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