Mums, dads & grandparents deliver pioneering Family Mentor programme

Newsletter No.9 November 2015

The first wave of £45m of Big Lottery funding is being used to employ local parents and grandparents as ‘Family Mentors’ – who will be able to deliver early intervention sessions about nutrition, language skills and the social and emotional development of babies.New Family Mentor roles have been created in Bulwell & Aspley

Supported and guided by the SSBC Programme and Specialist Teams, the Family Mentors will be given accredited training to support a baby’s development, right from the start. They will deliver group sessions in each neighbourhood as well as taking activities into family homes through the innovative “Small Steps at Home” home visiting programme (see more inside).

After detailed procurement and competitive tender processes, Groundwork Greater Nottingham were selected to lead a consortium of local voluntary and community sector organisations. The consortium, collectively known as Children First, includes: Bulwell Community Toy Library, Home Start Nottingham and Right Track. Together they will deliver the £3m, three year Family Mentor contract in the wards of Aspley and Bulwell.

CityCare Director of Operations & Transformation, Phyllis Brackenbury, said Family Mentors were to be a core element of the SSBC programme. She said: “We are delighted to have appointed the consortium led by Groundwork Greater Nottingham to deliver the Family Mentor programme in Aspley and Bulwell.

“Eleven of our ‘SSBC’ families played a key role in interviewing and then selecting Groundwork, alongside the city’s top thinkers in early child development.

“A mix of local and national organisations submitted proposals for the contract. The Groundwork consortium was felt to be the most robust and inventive pitch, as it was in tune with the lives of Nottingham families. They demonstrated a perfect blend of understanding local communities and experience of working with children aged 0 to three.”

Introducing the Family MentorsFamily Mentors will be a new and innovative ‘peer workforce’ in Nottingham. Designed to complement the existing workforce of child health, education and development professionals; Family Mentors have been recruited from the wealth of local mums, dads, grandparents and people who have lived experience of parenting in our communities.

What are we trying to achieve?Our aim is to create a new ‘peer workforce’ to work alongside parents and their families so that together we can improve outcomes in nutrition, language skills and the social and emotional development of children.

What’s different about Family Mentors?The children’s workforce benefits from many excellent and highly trained child health, education and development specialists.The role of the Family Mentor has been designed to support families in a way which complements, not duplicates, our existing workforce.

It is the concept of a ‘peer workforce’ which makes Family Mentors different. All Family Mentors must have lived experience of parenting within our communities. SSBC is seeking to harness the value of this ‘lived

knowledge’ and community connection. Family Mentors will build relationships with parents through visiting each family home at least once per month; from pregnancy through to the child’s 4th birthday. The structured home visits will deliver early intervention activities and actively signpost families to access the early support services available from professionals such as GPs, Midwives, Health Visitors and Children’s Centres.

How much are Family Mentors costing?The first contract in Aspley and Bulwell is worth £3m over the next three years. Over the ten years of SSBC, expenditure on Family Mentors will be the largest part of the Big Lottery Funding. All elements of the SSBC programme will be rigorously monitored and evaluated against children’s outcomes to understand the most cost effective interventions.

Who will get a Family Mentor?Family Mentors are completely universal; all families expecting a baby in the SSBC wards will be offered a Family Mentor.

When will the Family Mentors start work?The Family Mentors for Bulwell and Aspley wards will start to meet families in their wards from December 2015.

What are parents saying?Claire Romaniw, an Aspley parent involved in the tender selection process, said:

“It’s great to see local community and voluntary groups delivering parts of the SSBC programme. They’re really in touch with families in the neighbourhoods – they’re part of the community – that’s a massive strength for delivering services.”

Everything you need to know about Family Mentors...

SSBC group activitiesFamily Mentors will organise group activities in their wards. The activities will be designed to improve outcomes in nutrition, language skills and the social and emotional development of children.

Managers from across the SSBC partnership are engaged to ensure the new activities complement, and not duplicate, the existing offer which is currently delivered by SSBC partner organisations.

Small Steps at HomeFamily Mentors will deliver a home visiting programme called ‘Small Steps at Home’. Every family expecting a baby in the SSBC wards will be offered the programme.

‘Small Steps at Home’ will offer parents information and ideas which they can use to give their baby the best start in life. Parents will be able to explore a wide range of child development topics through easy bite-size activities - all in the comfort of their own home.

The Family Mentors will be equipped with a ‘Small Steps at Home’ handbook to guide the topics they cover with families during each visit.

The programme covers a wide range of topics to suit each child development stage.The content has been designed to offer practical tools and techniques for parents to use and adapt to suit their own family. The visits will also cover the topics that parents choose - to ensure that the visits respond to the unique circimstances of each family.

What will Family Mentors do?Family Mentors will deliver local group activities and the ‘Small Steps at Home’ home visiting programme.

Family Mentors have been equipped with the ‘Small Steps at Home’ handbook. The handbook provides Family Mentors with guidance for each home visit they complete with their families. The handbook for ‘pregnancy to six months’ has been completed. The handbook for ‘six months to two years of age’ is currently under development.

Colleagues from across the SSBC partnership are attending a ‘Small Steps at Home’ workshop on 1st December. The workshop will provide an overview of the topics being covered with families in pregnancy and their baby’s first six months.

The workshop is an opportunity for all sectors of the children’s workforce to share views on the future phases of the home visiting handbook.

We are currently developing the topics to be covered by ‘Small Steps at Home’ from six months to two years of age. So now is the perfect time for all partners to share the topics which are important to their organisations and explore the possibilities for collaboration with the ‘Small Steps at Home’ handbook.

“This is a great opportunity for Family Support and Early Years providers to get involved. There will be so many ways ‘Small Steps at Home’ can reinforce a strengths-based approach and elements of the Early Years curriculum.”

“The ‘Small Steps at Home’ programme gives us a great opportunity to work together. We can design it to support and reinforce elements of the Healthy Child Programme.”

Doing it together: the ‘Small Steps at Home’ programme

Cllr David Mellen, Portfolio Holder for Children’s Services

Phyllis Brackenbury, CityCare Director of Operations & Transformation

Invitation to Tender: Delivering the Family Mentor service in St Ann’s & ArboretumOn the 7th December the Small Steps Big Changes team will launch the Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the Family Mentor service in Arboretum and St Ann’s.

There will be a nine week period between launch of the ITT and the submission deadline on 8th February. The contract will be advertised in a variety of publications including the official journal of the European Union (Voluntary notice), Contracts Finder, Source Nottingham and publicised via Nottingham CVS.

Two information events have already been held to bring together a range of Community and Voluntary Sector (CVS) organisations. A third event will be held on the 2nd December from 10am – 12pm at the NCVS offices on Mansfield Road.

SSBC are looking for organisations with expertise in child development and supporting parents as well as strong local knowledge of the St Ann’s and Arboretum communities.The information events offer an ideal opportunity for organisations to begin the conversations that will help local CVS organisations to recognise each other’s strengths, and form partnerships, in preparation for when the ITT opportunity goes live on 7th December.

For more information please contact Stephen McLaren on 07970 946977

“We’re at a really exciting stage. There’s so much potential for local CVS organisations to join together and deliver the Family Mentor service. We firmly believe the CVS sector has the right mix of local knowledge and child development expertise to deliver this exciting new service at scale.”

Michelle Battlemuch, Head of SSBC

Family Mentorsin numbers

Twohome visits in

pregnancy

Weeklyhome visits from

0-8 weeks

Fortnightlyhome visits from

9 weeks to 6 months

Monthlyhome visits from

6 months to 4 years

£1.7mthe total annual value of the contracts to deliver Family Mentors in all

the SSBC wards

100%of families with newborn

babies in SSBC wards will be offered Small

Steps at Home

1,000+families with newborns will be offered Small Steps at

Home each year

12,000+children could benefit from

Small Steps at Home & local group activities over the next 10 years

61.5 10 70 90%additional hours of 1:1 personalised support will be given to each child by

their 4th birthday

new group activities will be put on every week in each of the

SSBC wards

new Family Mentor jobs are being created paying at least the living wage

of Family Mentor jobs have been filled by city

residents in the 1st wave of recruitment

Family Mentors will work towards the SSBC outcomes:

Family Mentors will receive outcomes focussed training including:

Success will be measured against:

• Improved communication & language• Improved social & emotional development• Improved nutrition• Improved parental engagement in services & decisions

• The SSBC Way & the Small Steps at Home programme• Triple P Positive Parenting Programme• ABC’s of Child Development • Father’s Reading Everyday• Overview of the Healthy Child Programme• Overview of Unicef UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative

• Level of service uptake• Duration of engagement • Degree of active engagement • Impact on SSBC programme outcomes• Parents’ satisfaction levels

Boost given to ‘Bump, Birth & Baby’ groups Expectant mums and dads in Nottingham can now join even better ante-natal groups.

Parents and professionals from across the SSBC partner organisations have worked together to enhance the groups.

Led by the Health Visiting team, the partnership has included new topics to cover at the group sessions. The name of the sessions has also changed from “Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond” to “Bump, Birth and Baby” (BBB).

The SSBC Programme Team worked with parents and Health Visitors to understand which additional topics they wanted to cover in the group sessions. For example, lots of parents wanted to know how to bath their newborn babies. So the new and improved sessions have been designed to cover more of the topics expectant parents are looking for.

Natalie Sumner, Health Visiting Team Manager, said: “Our partnership work has built on an already strong approach to ante-natal groups in Nottingham. Wendy Shaw and Lisa Wilson (co-authors of the original programme Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond) are continuing to coordinate the delivery of the Bump, Birth and Baby training package. This means that all Health Visitors and support staff across the city will be trained to deliver the enhanced programme across the city in the very near future.”

Michelle Battlemuch, Head of SSBC, said: “We’ve paid a lot of attention to the language we use to promote the groups. The new name Bump, Birth & Baby makes the groups sound friendlier. We’re all about making our services accessible to attract as many parents as possible.”

The new Bump, Birth & Baby group in Aspley has attracted higher numbers of expectant parents than ever before.

Commenting on this increased attendance Amanda Doughty, an Aspley Mum who helped to enhance the groups, said: “That’s amazing news! I’m so pleased because it’s a fantastic session and I hope numbers keep up.”

New promotional materials have been designed to appeal to expectant parents and promote the groups in a consistent way across the entire city.

New look newsletter!You might have noticed this newsletter is bigger than previous editions – bursting to the seams with news from SSBC! There is simply more ‘news’ now that the SSBC programme is moving from ‘planning’ to ‘delivery’ phases.

It’s an exciting time and this newsletter is key to spreading the word, celebrating progress and sharing the great work taking place across the SSBC partner organisations and communities. This newsletter is available in both hardcopy and ‘tablet friendly’ versions. The ‘tablet friendly’ version uses landscape pages, to fit the screen size better and reduce the need to scroll up and down long columns of text. We’ve also listened to midwives, teachers and nursery colleagues who’ve told us: “We’re on our feet all day, an email newsletter is no good, we need hardcopy newsletters in our staff rooms”. Now there’s a choice of newsletter format, making it easier for everyone to read the latest news from SSBC.

Sign up to receive this newsletter by emailing your contact details to: esme.macauley@nottinghamcitycare.nhs.uk

And don’t forget to stay in touch through facebook – simply search for Small Steps Big Changes to ‘like’ our page. Thank you!

Thanks to SSBC, expectant mums and dads across Nottingham can now benefit from a new, personalised smart phone app designed to guide them through pregnancy and the first six months of parenthood.

The free Baby Buddy app will help all Nottingham parents expecting a baby – as well as those living in the SSBC wards of Aspley, Bulwell, St Ann’s and Arboretum.

Baby Buddy works through parents creating an ‘avatar’. The avatar acts a personal friend to support parents on their emotional, physical and social journey through pregnancy and becoming a new parent.

The app has been produced by the child health charity Best Beginnings and endorsed by the Department of Health, the Royal College of Midwives and the Institute of Health Visiting amongst others.

SSBC has been working closely with Health and Early Years professionals to explore how the app can be used to support expectant and new parents.

Downloadable for free on Androids and iPhones, the app will be promoted in Children’s Centres, as well as through Health and Early Years professionals across Nottingham.

Parents or professionals interested in downloading the Baby Buddy app can do so for free from

www.bestbeginnings.org.uk/babybuddy

New mobile app benefits Nottingham parents

One parent who has already tried the app, Steph Brannigan of Bulwell, said:

“I think Baby Buddy’s a great app as it lets parents ask questions, that they may think are silly, at any time of day or night.”

“Parents have told us they want two things; information they can trust and information which they can find really easily. The Baby Buddy app is the perfect solution. It gives parents accurate advice, in an accessible way. It also helps parents to find local services, keep a diary of their appointments and become more attuned to the needs of their developing baby.”

Michelle Battlemuch, Head of SSBC

Pictured are Steph (with daughter Hara) and Michelle at the Baby Buddy Nottingham launch.

Daily information: a daily ‘push’ of information personalised to each baby’s stage.

Ask me: type in any question and Baby Buddy will answer with expert information.

The Baby Buddy app can:• help parents attune to their baby during pregnancy,

• answer questions 24/7 with expert, trusted information,

• show a map of local services including times and dates of sessions at Children Centres, health clinics & community groups.

Bump & Baby Around: a map of local activities including session dates and times.

Videos: short clips illustrating a range of parenting techniques.

Your appointments: a handy reminder for check ups and appointments.

Adding value to community buildings in NottinghamOur £300k capital programme is nearing completion and we are pleased to have created:• an office hub for the co-ordination of SSBC activity on the ground in each ward, and• additional delivery centres to ensure family activities can be delivered within a ‘pram push’ of each neighbourhood.

The capital programme has been planned strategically to:• renovate public buildings in key community locations,• combine resources and add value to the capital works of other partner organisations,• create extra space and capacity for the delivery of children’s services in SSBC neighbourhoods.

In line with the SSBC Way, parents were involved in the discussions about which buildings to renovate and how; helping to ensure building spaces are customer friendly, designed to be welcoming and offering the right facilities.

The Deaf Society:• One room has been renovated into an office hub for SSBC. • A new sign has been created in a gothic style to compliment the building’s architecture.

Arboretum

BEST Creative:• Works have been carried out in partnership by both BEST and SSBC.• The indoor space has been totally transformed with new flooring, seating and paintwork.• Two rooms have been renovated into an office hub for SSBC.• The outdoor staircase has been upgraded, in line with fire regulations, to enable the theatre space to be used by more people.

Bells Lane:• A brand new outdoor play area has been created.

• A new external door has been installed to create visibility from the hall to the play area.• New trees have been planted.

The Chase:• Two rooms have been renovated into an office hub for SSBC. • The North face of the building has been renovated with stained timber cladding.

• A new external door has been installed to create visibility from the hall to the play area.• New glazing and acoustic panelling has been installed to reduce noise pollution.

Bulwell Healthy Living Centre:• Two rooms have been renovated into an office hub for SSBC.

Snape Wood Community Centre: • The outdoor play area has been resurfaced and smartened up.• A new external door has been installed to create visibility from the hall to the play area.

Aspley St Ann’s Bulwell

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