Information for Carers

Safe Lives is a national charity that has worked for many years to end domestic abuse, and through this work we have gained a lot of experience and knowledge in working with families to make sure that their voices are at the heart of everything that we do. It is for this reason that Safe Lives has been asked to deliver the Family Voices Project.

The Family Voices Project is a piece of work that Safe Lives has been asked to do by national government departments. It is to support early help programmes to develop the best way for families to have a say in how the programmes work. This is so early help programmes can be of most use to the families that use them.

So far, Safe Lives has spoken with practitioners from early help programmes in Nottinghamshire about how they currently work with families to give them a voice in how the services work.

A key part of the project is for us (Safe Lives) to speak with families directly to understand how well you feel your voices are heard in Nottinghamshire and how much difference you feel you are able to make to how early help programmes are run.

The benefits of working with Safe Lives on this project are:

• To help Nottinghamshire County Council to make sure they always listen to the views and experiences of children, young people and parents/carers/families when they are creating new, and reviewing existing, early help programmes.
• To find out about the ways that the Council is already listening to children’s, young people’s and parents’/carers’ experiences and views when they are setting up new early help programmes or reviewing the ones they are already running.
• To see if these experiences and views make a difference to how early help programmes are set up and reviewed/improved. If so, how?
• To see if and how the sharing of their experiences and views makes a difference to children’s and families’ lived experiences of early help programmes and their daily lives.
• To share with other local authorities and national Government, any examples of where Nottinghamshire County Council is doing a good job of listening to children, young people, parents and carers, and making sure these views and experiences are influencing decisions and improvements to new and existing early help programmes
• To learn from other local authorities who are also doing a good job of this, to help us improve how we do it in Nottinghamshire
• To take the learning from Nottinghamshire to central Government to help create new, and improve existing, early help programmes across England and Wales.

By working with Safe Lives on this project we hope that:

• Nottinghamshire County Council and other organisations in the early help system will be better able to listen to the voices of children and families who use early help programmes
• these organisations always listen to your voices to create services that better meet your and other families’ needs
• learning from other local authorities involved in the project will help to improve early help programmes in Nottinghamshire
• the early help programmes in Nottinghamshire will be better able to meet your and other families’ needs.

As well as looking at practice in local Councils, Safe Lives has been asked to create some national best practice guidance, based on examples of good work in the local areas. This will help the Department for Education to share the good practice with all councils across England and Wales to improve how families can share their voices.

Early Help Programmes are any service that supports children and families as soon as they need help, to stop a minor problem becoming a crisis. It means families getting the right support and the right time.

Examples of early help and services include parenting support, emotional health and well-being support, and play and activity groups. (“Stepping in as soon as problems arise helps provide safe and happy childhoods. It helps keep families together. And it means children and young people are better prepared as they enter adulthood.” Action for Children [2024]).

The sessions are about your experiences of early help programmes that you have used. We have tried to make sure that the questions we are asking do not upset you, but we understand that talking about your personal experience might be hard for you to do. If you decide that you don’t want to carry on with the discussion, please let Lisa know and we will stop the session.

We would like to video/audio record the session or phone call so that Lisa can be fully involved in the discussion instead of taking notes. The recordings will not be shared with anyone but the transcribers.

If you change your mind about the sharing your experiences, you can ask us to remove your recording from the project up to 2 weeks after the session and we will arrange for the recording to be deleted.

Everything you say is confidential unless you tell Lisa something that means that you or someone else is at risk of harm. This is a safeguarding worry, and Lisa will need to share that information to keep people safe.

If you tell Lisa information about your experiences with an early help service that Lisa thinks needs to be shared so that the service can improve, then Lisa will discuss this with you first and ask for your agreement to share the information. If you don’t agree then Lisa will not share the information.

When we write the report for this project, we will make sure that everything you have said is made anonymous. If we can’t make something anonymous, we won’t share that piece of information.

Your personal information will be stored safely by Safe Lives for up to 6 months and the deleted. You can ask for a copy of your interview once transcribed if you wish