A study of the effect of poor environments on parenting. The authors explore what professionals and policy-makers can do to assist families living in poverty. They examine community-level poverty and its relationship to familial and individual problems such as low income, mental ill-health and child behavioural difficulties - problems that those working with poor families need to understand. Assessing the wider help parents receive, both through formal support services and the informal network of family and friends, the work shows how service-users' views of the resources available to them can be applied to the improvement of service provision. Presenting the findings of a Policy Research Bureau report to the Department of Health, and including data from in-depth interviews with parents living in especially difficult circumstances, this volume provides a guide to family support services in the United Kingdom.