Nottinghamshire County Council’s Early Years team has been working closely with childcare and early education providers to create additional quality childcare places across the county, including for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The creation of new childcare places is a key focus of the work to implement childcare reforms announced in March 2023 to offer eligible working families 30 hours of funded Early Years childcare a week by September 2025 and wraparound childcare from 8am to 6pm around the primary school day by September 2026. 

Councillor Tracey Taylor, Nottinghamshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Children and Families, said: “Childcare helps to provide children with the best start in life and get them ready for school. We are committed to making sure that families have more choice and greater flexibility in how and where they can access high-quality childcare. Many of our schools and settings have already benefitted from support to increase the number of places they offer as well as wraparound care."

Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham City Council, along with local partners including Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), are launching a new Self Harm and Suicide Prevention Strategy. Partners have also awarded £96,000 worth of small grants that will enable community groups to support the mental wellbeing of their local residents.

The Strategy is the result of collaborative work across local organisations and with people with lived experience of suicidality and bereavement by suicide. People with lived experience have helped to shape the vision and ambitions of the Strategy and have shared their own personal stories to continue to inspire people to do what they can to help prevent suicide in the future.

Local people have also developed a Suicide Prevention Charter setting out the values and principles which matter to them and what organisations should aspire to. A message of hope underpins the Charter and serves as a reminder that recovery is possible.

Nottinghamshire County Council is providing free travel to young carers and young adult carers, under 19 years old, as part of its commitment to supporting carers. 

The scheme is open to young carers who live in the county, and it allows them to travel free of charge on buses and trams anywhere within the county and city. The free travel will enable young carers to travel to school, college or work, visit friends and family and can be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A carer is anyone who provides unpaid care for a friend or family member who, because of illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction could not cope without their support. 

Foster carers at Nottinghamshire County Council are set to benefit from an increase to fostering allowances.

Nottinghamshire County Council has announced that it is increasing its basic foster care allowances as part of an ongoing drive to retain its current carers and attract more people to foster care.

All foster carers receive a weekly allowance to help cover the costs of providing care for a child, with the level of payment they get dependent on the age of the child or young person and the complexity of the care needs as well as the foster carers’ years of service.

Carbon associated with thousands of trees planted in Nottinghamshire will be used to generate funding to reinvest in maintaining woodland creation sites to help meet the challenges facing the environment.

New wooded areas have been created at several sites as part of Nottinghamshire County Council’s ongoing drive to plant more trees to mitigate the impact of climate change.

Up to 250,000 trees have been planted across the county in the past five years through the Government-led programme Trees for Climate – delivered locally via the Greenwood Community Forest initiative hosted by the council’s conservation team.

Take a photo of nature, tell us a story, or design your own rosette. A new schools’ resource pack is helping kids to get creative, and learn about farming.

On Saturday 10 May, the 140^th Nottinghamshire County Show will take place at the Newark Showground where thousands of visitors will be entertained by the wide range of livestock, horses, countryside competitions, local food producers, and craft stalls.

To mark the occasion; show organiser, Newark and Notts Agricultural society has partnered with Nottinghamshire County Council to produce a schools’ resource pack at the event website.

Nottinghamshire County Council and Veolia are thrilled to support Love Food Hate Waste’s Food Waste Action Week, by releasing brand new recipes which make the most of your leftovers.

Running from 17 to 23 March, Nottinghamshire residents are encouraged to reduce food waste by trying these recipes and buying loose fruit and vegetables.

Recent research showed that on average in Nottinghamshire, 25% of general waste in bins (by weight) is avoidable food waste. To encourage residents to reduce their food waste, local Home Economist and Food Demonstrator Teresa Bovey has developed a suite of recipes that make the most of typical leftovers.