Issue - meetings

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Portfolio Holder for Children Young People and Education introduced the report on the Early Help Partnership Strategy. Catherine Underwood, Corporate Director of People Services, Ailsa Barr, Director for Integrated Children’s Services and Veronica Fairly, Supporting families Co-ordinator gave a presentation outlining the strategy and the work currently under way. They highlighted the following points:

a)  Early help support is mainly delivered through the four Family Hubs which act as a single point of access for whole family support and services from conception up to 19 and up to age 25 for children with special education needs or disabilities. The hubs provide a range of services which aim to provide holistic support, clear referral pathways and links to partner organisations. There are four hubs in total, located in Bestwood, Broxtowe, Meadows and Hyson Green.

b)  The Early Help Partnership Strategy was launched in October 2023 as a way of improving partnership working and ensuring a multi partner response to need across the city. The strategy has a number of aims and priorities around building resilience for families, embedding a whole system approach and joined up partnership working.

c)  The five main priorities of the Strategy each had a subgroup working to push forward and establish their work. Priority 1 is to embed a whole system approach with work being undertaken to agree practice guidance, ensure access to all materials in a variety of formats and in the 5 most prevalent languages used in the city. Additional work is ongoing to ensure partnership access to electronic records and information, and to standardise language and documentation.

d)  The second priority is around partnership working, with work taking place to develop an updated communication and marketing strategy. The website has been launched and has had an encouraging number of visitors, and work to refine the collective Core Offer continues with partners. Work is focusing on how to communicate with the harder to reach families, with advertising being placed in a range of public places, such as GP surgeries, and community centres. All Councillors have received details of the family hubs offer and how citizens can access the services.

e)  The third priority is around workforce development across the partnership and developing a cross partnership training plan. A Strategic Steering group has been established and a number of subgroups have been set up to ensure that services across the partnership are aligned. Work is underway to share various training resources across the partnership to allow collaborative and joined up working where all practitioners feel supported and informed. 

f)  The fourth priority is around measuring the impact of the Early Help Partnership and creating an audit tool. Work is ongoing with partners to develop and agree key performance indicators,  and develop a consistent approach to gathering feedback from service users.

g)  The fifth priority is around funding and identifying sustainability options for the Partnership and how funding can be pooled. Work is happening to develop a sustainability strategy for 2025. The Council  ...  view the full minutes text for item 34