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Welcome to the October 2020 edition of the Notts Help Yourself Provider e-bulletin. The bulletins will let you know about new developments on the Notts Help Yourself website. If you need more information about these stories or would like to contribute something to a future edition please email nottshelpyourself@nottscc.gov.uk
Nottinghamshire County Council’s Early Childhood Services would like to say a big thank you to all of the childcare providers who remained open during lock down, providing a safe and happy environment for vulnerable children and those whose parents are key workers. Without the hard work of our fantastic private, voluntary and independent childcare and school-based settings many families would have experienced more challenging times. These early years providers responded to all the rapid changes coming from Government, ensuring that disruption to many children’s play and learning was minimised. We know lots of parents have been so grateful for the continued commitment of Nottinghamshire’s early years and childcare sector.
The COVID-19 Crisis Economic Recovery Action Plan sets out how the Council and the county can recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. To access the plan click here.
If you are a self-employed Personal Assistant (PA), you are now able to order a 4 week supply of your COVID-19 related PPE through Nottinghamshire County Council’s online system This is a change from previous advice to purchase this yourself from an external supplier.
Exceptions
If you are purchasing business as usual PPE, you should continue to use your usual supplier for all non-COVID-19 related PPE.
If you are a provider, PPE can be accessed through the Government PPE portal.
If you have any queries or want to speak to someone about this, then please email the PPE team at ppe@nottscc.gov.uk with your telephone number and a member of the team will call you back.
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Notts County Council is looking for providers who can offer quality short breaks provision for children and young people with disabilities. The purpose of this service is to enable children and young people to participate in positive activities away from their primary care givers and for parents/carers to have a break from their caring responsibilities. Provision could include one to one support to access activities in the local community, sitting in the home environment, group activities and occasional overnights.
Current gaps in the market include:
- Providers who can support with personal care and complex medical/health care needs
- Provision in Bassetlaw, Newark and rural areas of Rushcliffe
We now have a new service specification with an increased pricing structure to account for the child or young person’s level of need.
If you would like to discuss this opportunity further please contact Phil Smith, Market Development Officer, Children’s Commissioning Team on telephone: 0115 8040944 or philip.smith@nottscc.gov.uk
Please be aware that from 21st October NCC staff, Home Care Providers, Care Homes and the General Public will no longer be able to send emails as a means for making Adult safeguarding referrals to the MASH. In its place, we are excited to announce the launch of a new online form that will be available on the MASH website here.
On average, the MASH (Adults) team receives over 80 emails per day - half of which require additional information for staff to make informed decisions. This in turn leads to significant delay as Social Workers spend time collating this additional information – which may put the people involved at greater risk. The new online form eliminates such delay, as the information necessary is captured in the initial referral – thus ensuring the MASH team responds to safeguarding concerns as quickly as possible.
*Please note* Urgent referrals should still be made by phoning 0300 500 80 90
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Central government has launched a new fund to give babies from deprived areas or BAME backgrounds the best start in life. Click here for more information
Funding is available for grants between £200,000 to £510,000 per applicant over three financial years to expand or develop existing schemes. The deadline is 30th October at 12 noon.
Click here to apply.This fund is for voluntary community sector organisations or social enterprises, so we wanted to use this newsletter to make sure NYP providers are aware of it.
Early Childhood Services and Public Health colleagues in the County Council can support local bids to ensure that they are in line with our local priorities.
We recognise that some parents have been anxious about their child returning to formal childcare following the lock down. To encourage and reassure them, NCC’s Early Childhood Service have been running a social media campaign featuring comments and photographs of local children in Nottinghamshire childcare settings, telling just how safe and welcoming the sector’s provision is.
Please spread the work to your teams and service users that childcare in Nottinghamshire is very much “open for business”. As one mum said “don’t be afraid to send your children back, nursery have got it covered!”
For more information take a look at Nottinghamshire Families Information Service or Nottinghamshire County Council’s Facebook pages. Lots of families are eligible for funding support for childcare. Please help us spread the word amongst your staff and service users.Click here for more information.
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Right in the middle of lock down the Children’s Centre Service moved from being a commissioned service to being directly delivered by NCC. Over 300 staff transferred across and for families the services, people and buildings largely remained the same. The teams have responded brilliantly to the changes brought about by this move and also to the new ways of working due to Covid-19, keeping in touch with families throughout lock down and using social media for activities like the Virtual BABES breastfeeding support group.
As we move into the autumn, recovery planning is well underway with more services being offered face to face through outreach or in the Children’s Centre Service buildings. We’d really appreciate providers making service users and employees with young children aware that the CCS is very much open for referrals for family support and other activities are starting to come back on stream.
For more information including referral forms for professionals and parents please take a look at the new CCS webpages:
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We know that lots of families have struggled during the pandemic and so to make life a little easier, we’ve been putting lots of information on Notts Help Yourself, under the Parent Zone tile. Topics such as behaviour management, sleep, fun activities to do at home, child development and healthy lifestyles are all covered.
Please encourage your service users and staff to have a look at this resource – we hope they find it useful.
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We’d really appreciate all NHY Providers helping inform both the parents that you work with and also those within your own services of the Central Government guidance (1.9.2020)
2020 for parents and carers of children at:
- registered nurseries and childminders
- primary and secondary schools
- further education colleges
The updated guidance includes:
- new information on school admissions
- updated information on travelling to and from nursery, childminders, school and college
- updated information on education, health and care (EHC) plans, wellbeing and online safety
- updated information about assessment and exams
- updated information on face coverings. Click here to access the guidance
Most Inspire libraries have now reopened. Books and resources are available to browse or borrow in those that are open. You can search, reserve and renew books online.
Please also let people know that electronic resources - e-books, e-audiobooks, e-magazines and e-newspapers – are all available online here.
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Do you know any parents or carers who may need help paying for childcare? Funding for places for two-year olds is available for those eligible, and all three and four year olds are entitled to 15 hours of government funded childcare. More details here:
Working parents with children under 12 (or under 17 for disabled children) can open an online account to pay for registered childcare. For every £8 paid in, the government adds an extra £2: www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/care/early-years-and-childcare/tax-free-childcare
Are you in touch with any parents who might qualify for free school meals? Nottinghamshire schools have now reopened for the autumn term, and free school meals and universal infant free school meals will be provided as usual for all eligible children.
Full eligibility criteria, and other details, available here
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Find out how the website has been used by the public, including common search terms. See if there are any service gaps your service might be able to fill, including boxing clubs for women aged 16-25, visually impaired tennis groups outside of Nottingham and cookery classes for 16-25 year olds. You can now also access information on the current gaps for short breaks services for disabled children and young adults.
More details
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Please make sure that you keep your organisation's details up to date and make any changes on your profile section of the website.
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