CR spoke with Addaction about the Better Future For Families report

Simon: The first thing is, as you say, we're working with the whole family. The second part, which I think is absolutely critical, is that a lot of these families will have between 10 and 15 different agencies working with them for a whole range of issues; whether it's about the child's development, or their own addiction; whether it's about accommodation or employment. What we do, is we help to make sense of all of those agencies with the family and work through how they can negotiate through those agencies and get positive solutions. We also work directly with the family in their own home on the practical issues that are required to for example, get their kids back at school; get them up in the morning; thinking about the school uniform and the school day and working with the parents to get them back into routine to get their kids back at school; its practical solutions; it's working in their own homes.

Sarah J: Part of the Commission was making sure that there were six different family based treatment models that were explored. What do the success rates looks like for those families in reducing their substance or alcohol misuse or becoming abstinent, in comparison to an individual model?

Simon: When we've looked at the interventions for family based approaches within this commission report, what we've identified is that if you work with individuals in the community intensively, you will ultimately get success and it will be around the 50% mark. What we found with working with the whole family on a practical dedicated intervention is that you've got a success rate that moves dramatically up to the 80% mark. That's a significant difference in terms of the impact such interventions can have.

Sarah J: When you've been presenting this to Government and pointing out these factors, how are Government responding to the challenge?

Simon: Well its early days, but I have to say that in the last 18 months of talking about this initiative with local authorities we've gone from three Breaking the Cycle family based initiatives to over 20 in a very short space of time. This resonates with the Government's troubled family's unit approach to dealing with troubled families and I believe that there's a real opportunity here for the Government to work with Addaction to develop services across the whole of the country that can help deliver outcomes for those particular families.

Sarah J: If people want to read a bit more about Better Future for Families and find out a little bit more about the research that you guys have been involved in, how can they do that?

Simon: They can download the report from our web site www.addaction.org.uk or they can get in touch with us directly at our offices in London.