Skip to main content

Ambition 2 Supporting communities and families

Nottinghamshire has a diverse range of communities in our market towns, rural villages and urban centres. Supportive, vibrant communities can boost health and wellbeing, give people a sense of belonging, and create enjoyable, welcoming places to live.

Our libraries, children's centres and youth services are already doing exactly that and we need to make sure they meet demand and provide the best possible services for all our communities and families.

We know too that the Covid-19 pandemic created new challenges for our communities and made existing problems worse. During those difficult times, neighbours, volunteers, and members of our communities stepped forward to care for the most vulnerable, and we’d like to build on those new relationships, systems, and goodwill to help everyone thrive.  We also learnt a lot about communities’ needs during the pandemic and will use that knowledge to target our resources and support towards those who need it most, while providing services for all.  

Over the next few years, we plan to:

  • strengthen our relationships with the voluntary and community sector
  • empower people to help themselves in their own communities
  • make the most of community-based services to offer early help and interventions, and reduce the need for more complex and costly support later on
  • look at opportunities to share property with our partners to reduce our carbon footprint
  • deliver more joined-up services, closer to the communities we serve.

The Big Notts Survey

  • Over 1 in 3 (38%) of those 65 said the community coming together was one of the top positives that had come out of the pandemic
  • 1 in 3 people (32%) said strengthened community ties were something they would most like to see continue after the pandemic.

Over the next four years we will:

We’ll develop our Community and Voluntary Sector Compact to build stronger and longer-term partnerships that better support the voluntary sector. 

We will build on what we’ve learnt through the pandemic, to better meet the needs of the most disadvantaged:

  • We’ll deliver social recovery plans for those most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and direct resources and funding to initiatives that will help the most disadvantaged.
  • We’ll further develop our Community Support Hub and look at ways we can use technology to help partners and volunteers support people more effectively.
  • We’ll launch and deliver a new four-year Local Communities Fund programme to fund community initiatives and projects where the need is greatest.

We’ll support and empower those we work with to make a positive contribution and make a difference to the things in their community that matter to them.

We will deliver our ‘Best Start’ Strategy [PDF] so that all children grow up in the best possible health, are protected from harm, and can access an education that helps them reach their full potential.

We will pilot new Family Hubs to offer early integrated help to better meet the needs of families. Family Hubs will bring together a range of organisations who serve the local community to address local families’ specific needs.

To support children with special educational needs and their families, we’ll improve the range of local, specialist services, and look at ways we can better support those preparing for adulthood.

We’ll develop our libraries as community, cultural and learning hubs, and we’ll keep our comprehensive libraries network.  We’ll provide a range of events, courses and activities that are accessible in local communities and affordable for everyone. And, we’ll support young children to develop language, reading and motor skills.

We’ll invest in our Youth Service so that young people have somewhere safe to go, trusted youth workers to talk to, and fun and engaging things to do. We’ll also run outdoors activity experiences for our foster care families and all our children in care.

We’ll keep investing in our registration services for births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships, to provide the best support we can for milestone moments in everyone’s lives.

We’ll offer people with social care needs the right support, at the right time and close to home. We’ll strengthen our multi-agency community teams and make it easier for people to find help when they need it most. This will help people to have a good life in their local communities and avoid more costly interventions later.   

We’ll look for opportunities to share property and services with our partners, allowing us to bring services together in local communities to provide value for money and easier access for people.

Through our cross-Council ‘Early Help and Prevention’ transformation programme we’ll look at ways of providing the right support early on. This will better support communities and families and prevent more costly interventions later on.

Success means:

  • Communities will support each other through volunteering and involvement in local organisations
  • More children are ready for school, with better development by the end of reception year
  • Community and public sector organisations widely adopt the Community Compact
  • Funding reaches those community projects and initiatives that will best support our communities
  • Quality and comprehensive services are delivered in the communities where the need is greatest
  • Improved and better co-ordinated services in local communities­­.

In 2022-23, to achieve this, we will deliver the following actions:

We will encourage key partners to adopt the Compact developed between public sector bodies and voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations. We will work with the VCS sector to understand what support is needed to maintain and grow its capacity. This will help us to work together to build a strong, vibrant and sustainable VCS and provide effective community-based support to Nottinghamshire’s communities and residents.

We will establish Family Hub Networks across Nottinghamshire that help to give children the best start for life. This will give parents/carers, children and young people access to local support centres, where they can find a broad and integrated range of support and early help to help them overcome challenges and build stronger relationships

We will work with our partners to improve the way children receive support to develop their speech language and communication, aligning early intervention support with specialist speech and language services across the County. This will ensure all children have the opportunity to access services and support to help them develop their communication skills, so that they can reach their potential.

We will increase the range and quality of short breaks provision and opportunities for education, employment and training after school for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND). This will support children, young people with SEND and their families to stay happy, healthy and thrive in their
communities.

We will review how people can access services, information, advice and guidance from Nottinghamshire County Council, through our Improving Residents Access programme. This will enable residents to find the right information and help, at the right time and in the right place.

We will implement a comprehensive review of the County Council's Registration Service, services for births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships. This will ensure the Council provides the best support we can for milestone moments in everyone’s lives.

We will use the ‘3 conversations’ approach in all our adult social care assessments. These conversations will strengthen the focus on how an individual can use the support around them and access resources in their community. It will also ensure that we concentrate on what is important to the person and their carer(s).

We will develop a strategy to improve support for those with autism at all stages of their lives.

We will publish a Day Opportunities Strategy. This will set out our ambition to support the development of an
inclusive society where mainstream leisure and employment is accessible to people who access care
and support.

To find out more about what we’ve got planned for the current year, you can read our full Annual Delivery Plan 2022/23 [PDF].

Our other ambitions

Scroll to top of page