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Ambition 3 Keeping children, vulnerable adults and communities safe

We play an essential role in keeping all residents - especially children and vulnerable adults - safe and supported in our communities.

We take our responsibilities very seriously, and we’re working hard with partners like the police, district and borough councils, the NHS and Government agencies, both to improve our support and tackle some of the challenges that Covid-19 has brought about.

The Big Notts Survey

  • Over 1 in 3 (37%) said that one of their top ambitions for their local area would be lower crime and safer streets.

Over the next four years we will:

We’ll lead and coordinate the Safer Nottinghamshire Board, working with the Police, the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Fire and Rescue Service and district/borough councils to tackle and prevent crime in our communities.   

 

We’ll lead work with the Police and Crime Commissioner and other partners to reduce domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. We’ll also strengthen and develop our services for people experiencing domestic abuse.

We’ll work with the Nottinghamshire Violence Reduction Unit to deal with the underlying causes of knife crime and violence and find solutions that help protect young people from harm.

We’ll focus resources on preventing vulnerable people from becoming victims of fraud and tackle more businesses that trade fraudulently.

Building on our work to develop Nottinghamshire’s Community Hub during the pandemic, we’ll work with our partners to join up our support for vulnerable people and communities. This will help us offer better support and reduce loneliness and isolation.

With our partners, we’ll protect communities most at risk of flooding through:

  • securing funding to develop flood protection schemes
  • designing new developments with flood protection
  • responding quickly to flood emergencies
  • communicating with communities at risk
  • supporting the most vulnerable.

We’ll develop and deliver our cross-Council transformation programme, ‘Whole Family Safeguarding’. This will improve the support we can offer to vulnerable families, so they can bounce back from difficulties faster and fewer children will need to go into foster or residential care.

We’ll increase the number and diversity of foster placements for children in our care, and support those children and families better, so they can stay in happy and stable homes.

We’ll provide consistent care to children and young people in residential homes, and make sure they feel safe, happy and secure. We’ll also support them with well-trained and empathetic staff and give them opportunities to learn and have fun. Where possible and when the time is right, we’ll help them move to a family home.

We’ll support young people leaving care to prepare them for adulthood, commissioning services to meet their needs and help them to stay safe, healthy, happy and fulfil their potential.

We’ll support people with social care needs to find and maintain a safe place they call home. We’ll provide the right level of support to our vulnerable adults, at the right time in their lives, and look to make best use of the strengths and resources people have in their family, friends and community to help them to live as independently as possible.

With our partners, we’ll commission services that help to prevent homelessness, supporting national plans to end rough sleeping altogether.

We’ll keep improving our support for vulnerable children and adults:

  • Through our Adult Safeguarding Board and Safeguarding Children Partnership, we’ll review what works well and where we can make improvements, helping support our most vulnerable children and adults. We’ll deliver annual improvement plans to make sure our work keeps getting better.
  • Our new councillor-led Children Looked After Board will drive our work to keep children safe in our care.
  • We’ll make our Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) more efficient and effective. We’ll focus our resources on protecting those most at risk, and will work with partners to make sure those most in need are referred to the MASH.
  • Through the cross-Council ‘All Age Approaches’ transformation programme we’ll improve support for people with disabilities,  providing the right support at key points in people’s lives.

Success means:

  • Crime levels in Nottinghamshire reduce
  • People feel safer in their communities
  • People who use our adult social care services feel safe and secure
  • Children and adults at risk are appropriately identified, supported and protected
  • Children in our care remain in long-term stable placements
  • An increase in good and outstanding Care Quality Commission (CQC) registered provision for adults.

In 2023-24, to achieve this, we will deliver the following actions:

Provide advice and support to residents that have been the victim of a scam or doorstep crime and provide prevention advice for those vulnerable to scams or doorstep crime to try and prevent financial abuse.

Investigate and remove unsafe products from the market so that residents, especially the most vulnerable in our communities, are protected from harm or fatal injury. In particular, we will investigate alleged incidents of the illegal sale of vapes to minors. These investigations and related activities will help to reduce the exposure of young residents to potentially harmful products.

Continue to prioritise improvements in the County Council services that are supporting and protecting children, families and vulnerable adults who need help, support or care. This will ensure that we are able to evidence the difference we make and how we are improving outcomes for people, assuring our external regulators that we are performing well and meeting our statutory duties.

Work with partners including the Safer Nottinghamshire Board to prevent and reduce violent crime, including residents’ involvement with County Lines gang activity and violence against women and girls. This will contribute to feelings of safety in communities, whilst ensuring that victims and survivors are supported.

Improve the pathways and services that enable people and partners to access support for children, young people, families and adults in need of care and support, through our multi-agency needs led front door transformation project. This will ensure that safeguarding concerns are identified, assessed and acted on appropriately and that people are able to access timely and proportionate advice, guidance and intervention.

Continue to improve how the Council supports and safeguards children who are subject of a child in need or child protection plan, responding to the findings of the national Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, so that children are protected from harm and families are supported to make positive and sustainable changes. This will build on the success of innovation projects already implemented through our Whole Family Safeguarding transformation programme.

Continue to improve how we support those children who are at risk of offending and criminal/sexual exploitation and widen the number of young people at risk of offending/criminal exploitation that we are able to support through a whole family assessment, by delivering the Ministry of Justice Turnaround Programme.

Invest in kinship and foster care as a key priority in our Whole Family Safeguarding transformation programme, working with regional partners, so that more children benefit from safe and stable care in a family setting, as close to home as possible.

Continue to improve, expand and refurbish the Council’s residential homes for children in our care through our Whole Family Safeguarding transformation programme, so that children can remain closer to home and achieve good outcomes.

Improve the pathways and support offered to young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families, through our transformation programmes, as they plan and prepare for adulthood.

Continue to embed strengths-based practice approaches, improving how we work with adults who need support and/or care, building on their strengths, assets and skills to support them to live the best life they can and reduce reliance on long-term care.

As a commissioner we will shape, develop and manage the adult social market to improve stability so that residents who have care and support needs have appropriate choice to meet their needs.

To find out more about what we’ve got planned for the current year, you can read our full Annual Delivery Plan 2023-2024 [PDF].

Our other ambitions

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