Small Steps Big Changes Family Mentor Service

Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC) is a 10 year £45m transformation programme hosted by Nottingham CityCare Partnership, supported by the National Lottery Community Fund's (NLCF) A Better Start (ABS) initiative. SSBC is a partnership of parents and professionals working together, through co-production and parent powered change, to drive the delivery of the programme and focus on giving every child the best start in life by helping children to live happy, healthy and fulfilled lives. SSBC is one of only five programmes nationally. The programme commenced in April 2015. For further information on the SSBC programme, please see our website.

Family Mentors are a ground-breaking peer workforce of people who ‘speak the same language’ as local families and the service was developed through a comprehensive process of consultation and co-production with local parents and families.

They were recruited for their ‘lived experience’ of parenting within local communities to enable greater insight into local challenges and support parents to be the best they can. They understand and are able to guide SSBC parents along a journey that results in healthy, happy, communicative and fulfilled children. The Family Mentors work closely with Health Visiting Teams, Early Help and other statutory and third sector agencies.

Family Mentors are at the core of Small Steps Big Changes – central to our values and our commitment to co-production with local communities.

There are two parts to the Family Mentor service, a manualised home visiting programme – Small Steps at Home and Family Mentor community group activities. The service also includes volunteering opportunities in group delivery support and administration.

The Family Mentor Service has been shown to make a significant contribution to the delivery of all four of our programme outcomes since its inception and roll-out in June 2015. Building on this success and incorporating the lessons learned since 2015 this re-tender for the current contract, as it approaches expiry, seeks to continue to deliver support activities and interventions to local families in Hyson green & Arboretum and St Ann’s wards.