A team from Bath & North East Somerset Council is celebrating ten years of success after helping more than 1,700 families improve their lives.
The Guildhall in Bath
The local authority’s Connecting Families team provides a range of support including getting children back into education, housing assistance and help with issues such as alcohol and substance misuse with the aim of achieving better outcomes for the whole family.
Families can also get help with returning to employment, ensuring they are receiving the correct benefit entitlements and debt advice. Specialist workers including a family mediation worker and an Afghan refugee worker are part of the team.
Regular training courses are available to help parents of teenagers navigate the tricky time of parenting young people.
Since it was set up in 2012, the team has supported 1,723 families including 1,365 children and 927 adults.
One parent said: “Over the last five months he (their keyworker) has supported our family, especially our daughter, to look for the positives and not to dwell in the past.
“He has had a positive impact on our whole family and we truly believe he has been sent to us for a reason. I am pleased to say that our daughter is flourishing, she is working hard at school, remaining in class and staying away from trouble.
“We have attended the parenting classes as a family and entered feeling like failures as parents, and we have left thinking we haven’t done a bad job! We would highly recommend The Connecting Families team. You are all heroes.”
The team is funded by the council and the Supporting Families programme under the Government’s Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Councillor Dine Romero, cabinet member for Children and Young People, and Communities, said: “We are delighted that so many families have been supported towards a better life over the past ten years, which is a huge achievement for our Connecting Families team.
“With our partners, we adopt a ‘whole family’ approach to achieving successful outcomes for children and their parents or carers, ensuring that changes people make to their lives are sustained and that each member of the family is able to flourish.
“If the wellbeing of your family is being affected by issues like parenting struggles, physical or mental ill-health or financial worries, get in touch with us sooner rather than later to find out about the early help available.”
To find out more about the help available from Connecting Families, visit this page or email the team at [email protected].
