Troubled families need nurture, Louise Casey claims

We missed this interesting and revealing interview with Troubled Families head Louise Casey when it first appeared in The Guardian last week.

Speaking on social work practice she said 'I think we need to bring back, actually, some emotional exposure, the ability to be human, the ability to empathise, not to be fearful of empathy.'

She also speaks about her embarrassment at being secretly recorded giving an expletive-ridden speech to senior police officers in 2005, which later appeared on the front page of The Daily Mail.

'I thought I was going to be sacked, yeah. It was just terrible. When I'd done the speech, of course, I hadn't clocked the significance of using the F-word 17 times in a speech. I know that's stupid, and I was incredibly naive, and ridiculously stupid. But you know, I was talking to a police audience and I was told to be humorous and funny. But, of course, when it came out, oh God, I was mortified. I was ashamed of myself, I felt I'd let my team down, the cause down, myself down. It was humiliating, and I'm so stupid, it was just stupid.

Related items

The trouble with the Troubled Families programme (December 5, 2013)
Anything wrong with this speech? (July 24, 2013)
Let them scrub floors (May 2, 2012)