Agenda item

Report of the Head of Legal and Governance

Councillor David Mellen – Portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years, Karla Capstick - Programme Director at Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC), and Steph Brannigan – Parent Champion for SSBC, presented an update on the Programme, as per the PowerPoint slides circulated with the first publication of the minutes. They highlighted the following points:

(a)  SSBC is funded by a lottery grant of £45,000,000.00 over a 10 year period to work with parents in four key wards. It is a large amount of money and a chance to work intensely and make a difference, and do things in a slightly different way;

(b)  the board is made up of 30-40, around half of whom are parents from those wards. There is a strong partnership with parents and professionals. The programme is about to enter its fourth year, so not yet halfway through;

(c)  the SSBC motto is “Growing our children together with love and respect”. Parents are engaged to make decisions, lead the programme, and are supported and guided by experts;

(d)  in terms of performance, cross partnership system change is the most difficult target to measure. Hopefully these early support schemes will help those children throughout their childhood, education, career and lives, supporting families and their children to thrive and reducing the need and cost for care interventions later down the line;

(e)  work takes place with local parent champions within communities. Aspley and St Anns each have one parent champion vacancy at the moment. Parents also play a vital part in scoring and developing tenders. SSBC tries to work as closely with the parents in those communities as possible, developing genuine co-production. Parent champions are voted into post by other parents in the community and have a 2 year term, after which they can stand for re-election if they wish;

(f)  35 volunteers have moved on to paid employment. There are currently 50 family mentors, but this will be expanding soon to coincide with upcoming ward boundary changes. These are paid roles, with 80% of family mentors living in those areas where they help;

(g)  currently SSMC is reaching 69% of families within the wards, which is slowly rising as children age as it is a from birth service. The rate is 72% in areas where it’s been running longer. Those families may be receiving books, visiting support groups, or receiving support visits. This is on top of statutory and other services offered universally, such as health visitors, children’s centres, priority families, family support, targeted services for teen parents etc;

(h)  91% of those families surveyed would recommend the service. There has been positive feedback from those who’ve accessed the support, with some going on to volunteer or work with SSBC. There have been over 45,600 interactions, over 62,480 books delivered, and 1,200 children attending groups;

(i)  it is recognised that there is a need to do some re-focusing work, now that SSBC has been operating for three years. There is a chance to pause and reflect on the priorities for the next three or four years. The Lottery’s priorities have included increased reach. Some of the children will be starting school soon, so it is hoped that evidence can be gathered around the impact on those children when they attend nursery or school;

(j)  a national evaluation is being conducted by Warwick University to evaluate all five schemes across the country. Locally, Nottingham Trent University has been commissioned to evaluate the Nottingham programme, to analyse what has worked/not worked, why/why not?

Following questions and comments from the Committee, some further information was provided:

(k)  the SSMC programme is offered by health visitors. There is also publicity in wards (though more is needed), and parents are referred by word of mouth from parent champions and colleagues in Early Help and Early Years as well. Signposting help would also be welcomed from Councillors for the four wards;

(l)  the four wards were chosen by specific criteria set by the Lottery fund, such as levels of deprivation and numbers of children and adults. There is an agreement that all children within Hyson Green will be able to access the programme after the ward boundary changes;

(m)  the programme is on track to move towards the intended objectives over the 10 years. It is too early to say whether targets will definitely be met, but outcomes are going in the right direction and improving at a suitable pace;

(n)  in terms of local employment, around 80% of people employed by SSBC live within the city boundary. Some people don’t want to work in the area they live to avoid coming into contact with people they know, but a lot do live and work in the area they work in. 80% is positive and SSBC are pleased with the figure;

(o)  staff and volunteers from SSBC are happy to attend any local events to raise awareness of the service, and any suggestions are welcomed;

(p)  the success of the programme will reinforce the value of spending money early on children and families, and will perhaps be worked into services offered by other organisations nationwide in future after the 10 year programme has ended.

RESOLVED to:

(1)  thank Karla Capstick, Steph Brannigan and Councillor David Mellen for their update, and to note the information;

(2)  invite Small Steps Big Changes back to the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Committee when information is available from qualitative evaluations concerning outcomes at school age.