The Children's Fund

The Children’s Fund is part of the Government’s strategy for tackling child poverty and is aimed at children and young people aged between 5 and 13 years old.

The purpose of the fund is to make sure that children have the help they need with problems now, so that as children get older, the problems don’t get worse. For more information visit Nottingham City Children's Fund website.

The Children’s Fund is financing two major new initiatives:

1. MALT Project

Following the experience and learning gained from the first Multi-Agency Locality Team (MALT) in the north-west of the city, a second is to be rolled out to cover the south-east comprising Clifton, the Meadows, St Ann’s and Sneinton. The aim is to improve primary mental health care services to children and young people in the area by combining resources currently provided separately by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) at Thorneywood, Social Services resources and Education Psychology and Behaviour Support services.

The team will operate on a “hub and spoke” model, that is, having a central base and providing sessions at a number of other locations in the area to make them more accessible and to enable the team to build relationships and offer support to others involved. The team will provide a direct casework resource to schools in the area and to families directly referring. They will also provide support and training to school staff etc directly involved in working with children and a referral service to other provision if necessary. The team will liaise with school nurses to ensure access to a general health perspective, and with other Children’s Fund emotional support projects in the area.

2. Family Support Project

This project will provide support to families  where a parent or carer has difficulties which affect their parenting capacity e.g. mental health, learning disability, health problems. It will serve the city’s  St Ann’s and Arboretum areas where there are approximately 5000 children in the 5-13 age group and high levels of social need.

The Family Support Project will work alongside the existing successful family support services provided by the Sure Start/Children’s Centre and build on its experience and good practice.

This project will become an important component in a future integrated support strategy for the city. It will operate a responsive outreach model which has a capacity for crisis response, offers home-based work with children and parents and can offer appropriate services to black and minority ethnic communities.

The project will be provided by a voluntary sector organisation and the selection process will be completed shortly.