A Lowestoft-based social enterprise is helping to pioneer a programme that will help 1,150 troubled families in Suffolk that need long term and intensive support.

Empowering-Communities is providing an information sharing system to help councils, such as Waveney District Council, police and other agencies record and share details to help tackle problems of truancy, crime, anti-social behaviour and unemployment faced by the 1,150 families.

Empowering-Communities's E-CINS system will be piloted in Lowestoft as part of the Suffolk Family Focus programme which aims to help up to 320 families a year until 2015.

The Suffolk Family Focus project is part of the government's Troubled Families scheme which wants to turn around the lives of 120,000 families nationally, which cost the taxpayer �9bn a year.

In Suffolk it is estimated the 1,150 families cost �8.6m a year.

Gary Pettengell, founder of Empowering-Communities, said: 'E-CINS enables practitioners to record and share information in realtime with all agencies involved in a family's case.

'Support workers are constantly kept up to date because it creates an environment where everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

'This vastly improves communication and outcomes for the people they are tasked to help.'

John Sanderson, from Suffolk Family Focus, said: 'The process of co-ordinating the information-flow and communication between partners is a much easier task via E-CINS.

'We feel we now have a real opportunity to help break the cycle of inter-generational crime, unemployment and low aspirations to deliver sustainable improvements in outcomes for these families.'