Cornwall’s Together for Families partnership has been praised for its work in "turning around the lives of almost 1,000 families with the most complex needs" over the last three years.

The work with the families was part of the three year national “Troubled Families” programme, which was launched by Prime Minister David Cameron in March 2012. It supports local organisations which are working with families providing mainstream and specialist support.

Cornwall Council has worked with partners to help "975 families to get back on track".

This includes, improving school attendance and reducing exclusion rates, reducing anti social behaviour and youth offending andSupporting people back into work or onto a work programme.

Cornwall’s partnership, which includes Cornwall Council, Devon and Cornwall Police, Health commissioners, Probation, the Drug and Alcohol Action Team, Education Welfare, Youth Offending team, Careers South West and representatives of the voluntary and community sector (including Action for Children and Addaction), was set up in 2012 following the launch of the Government’s Troubled Families programme.

Andrew Wallis, the Council’s Cabinet Member for Young People, said “Working with the families directly enables the partner agencies to help overcome the difficulties the families face. The results of this programme shows that tackling the issues as a family unit helps achieve real positive outcomes.

Following Cornwall’s success in achieving "positive outcomes" for over 75 per cent of eligible families, Cornwall will now progress to the second phase of the programme which runs from 2015 to 2020. The new programme has a target of supporting an additional 4,050 families in Cornwall over the next five years.

This will mean continuing to work with key partners in Police, Health, Education and Employment to identify and engage eligible families and working with communities and voluntary sector partners to get people into work , improve school attendance and attainment, reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and tackle health issues including drug and alcohol dependency.

“The new programme provides an opportunity for partner organisations to work closer together to support communities and families in Cornwall and to become better and smarter at how we deliver services” said Mr Wallis.

“This will enable us to meet the needs of these families at the same time as saving money across the public sector.

“To achieve this within reduced levels of funding we will need to engage with families and support them to address a range of complex issues at the same time as getting services to think and work differently with families”.

Further information is available from http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/togetherforfamilies.