1.
Together for Families
Alison Smith – Together for Families Lead Officer
V1.0

2.
Together for Families
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A national programme to ‘Turn around’ the lives of troubled
families
Troubled families are defined as those who:
o Are involved in crime or anti social behaviour
o Have children who don’t attend school or are often
excluded
o Have been long term unemployed
These families often have a wide range of other problems
which lead to their children repeating the cycle of
disadvantage
These families often require regular input from public
services and often with little changing as a result
Target for Cambridgeshire – 805 families

3.
The Smith family
 Long history of offending including violence – mother recently in
prison for assault.
 9 children aged between 2 and 20
 Oldest 2 children both have had episodes in prison
 Children attending 4 different schools and all with poor attendance
 One child in alternative specialist educational provision and two
children on Pastoral Support Plans for poor behaviour
 Lack of boundaries in the family home
 Anti social behaviour in the community including intimidation,
harassment and noise
 Health appointments regularly not met
 High level of rent arrears / not able to manage finances
 Long history of agency involvement with no improvement

4.
How did they arrive in
this situation?
 Mother experienced a poor upbringing with no stability and violence
was a regular part of her childhood
 The children have 4 different fathers, three of whom were violent to
mother.
 Much of the domestic abuse witnessed by the children
 Mother had a poor experience of support services and perceived
she was always told what to do and felt heavily judged
 Mother had no wider support network, the anti social behaviour had
alienated neighbours and friends which led to her feeling more and
more defensive and unwilling to accept support
 House size inadequate for the size of the family making it difficult for
mother to put in any boundaries

5.
What can we do?
 A dedicated worker, dedicated to the family – the Lead
Professional
 Working with the family as a whole
 Delivering hands on and practical support
 Being assertive, persistent and challenging
 A common purpose and agreed action with all other agencies

6.
Outcomes for the Smith family
 The family have a stable tenancy and there has been no
further anti social behaviour in the last 6 months
 All children are attending school full time and behaviour
in school has improved
 Mother has clear boundaries for the children and clear
routines which the children stick to
 Mother takes responsibility to respond to issues such as
health needs as they arise
 There is a clear budget plan, with debts steadily being
paid off
 There have been no further police call outs to the home
 Mother works proactively with professionals

7.
What has been achieved?
 Identifying families
 We have identified 413 families
 We have started working with 390 of them
 Supporting lead professionals
 Training
 Ongoing supervision and coaching
 Flexible budget to support family needs
 Outcomes
 Evaluation underway
 Cost benefit analysis for most complex families

8.
Long term?
 There is commitment from all public sector partners in
Cambridgeshire to embed this approach beyond the
initial group of families
 The ‘Community Budget’ model will provide a framework
for all services working with families to formally commit
to working with this common model