Title | Problem-solving for problem-solving: Data analytics to identify families for service intervention |
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Type | Journal article |
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Authors | Edwards, R., Gillies, V. and Gorin, S. |
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Abstract | The article draws on Bacchi’s ideas about problematisation (2020) and links to technological solutionism as governing logics of our age, to explore the double-faceted problem-solving logic operating in the UK family policy and early intervention field. Families with certain characteristics are identified as problematic, and local authorities are tasked with intervening to fix that social problem. Local authorities thus need to identify these families for problem-solving intervention, and data analytics companies will solve that problem for them. In the article, we identify discourses of transmitted deprivation and anti-social behaviour in families and the accompanying costly public sector burden as characteristics that produce families as social problems, and discursive themes around delivering powerful knowledge, timeliness and economic efficiently in data analytic companies’ problem solving claims for their data linkage and predictive analytics systems. These discursive rationales undergird the double-faceted problem-solving for problem-solving logic that directs attention away from complex structural causes. |
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Keywords | families and early intervention, predictive analytics, problem-solving, social problems, technological solutionism |
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Journal | Critical Social Policy |
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Journal citation | 47 (2), pp. 265-284 |
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ISSN | 0261-0183 |
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| 1461-703X |
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Year | 2022 |
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Publisher | Sage |
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Publisher's version | License CC BY 4.0 File Access Level Open (open metadata and files) |
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Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183211020294 |
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Web address (URL) | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02610183211020294 |
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Publication dates |
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Published | 02 Jun 2021 |
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Published in print | 2022 |
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