Highlights and Achievements 2006-2011

• Over 1300 resource/information packs distributed across the country.
  
• Over 1200 colleagues participated in our workshops – in prisons, in communities and in education and criminal justice settings.
  
• Awareness-raising training delivered in 10 areas of the Thames Valley – with multi-agency networks established in 6 and developing in 2 others. A key factor in all these networks is the introduction of the Probation Service to family support services and the setting up of effective working relationships between all the network partners.  The Probation Service has been brought into the loop of these services for the first time. 
  
• Awareness-raising training delivered into 15 prison establishments in Hampshire,ThamesValley, Isle of Wight andSurrey
• Awareness-raising training delivered to 120 Probation Staff acrossThamesValley with links established with children and young people’s services and regular networking opportunities.
  
• National interest In early 2009 we delivered training into the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and provided advice and consultancy to enable them to kick start a new programme of work under the Children and Families Pathway.  Late 2009 also saw us delivering our training into Hounslow and into the London Borough of Camden in early 2010. Family Matters delivered a series of workshops in November 2009 at the joint DCSF and MoJ National Think Family Event inWestminster showcasing the links established between HMP/YOI Reading and Reading Borough Council. The framework document launched at the event  ‘Reducing Re-offending; supporting families, creating better futures’ mentions the referral process established by North Oxfordshire network as an example of good practice and integrated working.  We currently sit on a national working group with the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice developing national multi-agency guidelines to support offender families.
• Improved outcomes for families demonstrated including reduced
  
• reoffending, improved take up of community universal services e.g. Children’s Centres for children and families and more integrated approaches to family support.
  
• New resources developed e.g. Custody – What Now leaflet, Invisible Children, e-learning tool for schools on www.SCIE.org.uk and ‘Guidelines for Working with Children who have a Family Member in Prison’. 
  
• 2011 Successful bid to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to extend and develop the programme into a ‘whole-system’ approach and to set up the new court desk.