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Exciting News!

We're thrilled to announce that our Family Mentor Service won the Early Intervention and Prevention for Children, Young People and Families Award at the 2024 HSJ Awards - an annual initiative that celebrates successes across the health and social care sector; helping inspire and shape the future of the NHS.

The Family Mentor Service is a key element of the SSBC Programme, and have been in operation since 2015.  During this time, the service has been delivered by three community providers - Homestart Nottingham in Aspley, The Toy Library in Bulwell, and Framework HA in Hyson Green and Arboretum, and St Ann's.

Family Mentors support families through delivery of a home visiting service known as Small Steps at Home and providing free community groups and activities.  Since 2015 over 6,200 individual children have benefitted from the Service with a massive 142,600 separate interactions.

“It really is such an honour to win a prestigious HSJ Award, in this the final year of the SSBC Programme locally. We are immensely proud of the families supported, the new job roles and qualifications created and the achievements of the Family Mentor Service over the last nine years of test and learn. We are thankful for the recognition and hope this will inspire other health and care systems to invest and focus on the importance of prevention, early intervention and babies, children and families with services just like the Family Mentors.”

Karla Capstick, Director at SSBC

“Year on year, I'm always so impressed by the innovation, dedication and integrity of all those who take the time to submit and entry to the HSJ Awards - and this year has been no exception, with an outstanding calibre of applicants, presenting some tough decisions and much deliberation for the judging panel! I'd therefore like to extend my personal congratulations to Small Steps Big Changes who were named as the very worthy winner in the category of Early Intervention and Prevention for Children, Young People and Families. Welcome to our growing family of HSJ Awards success stories!”

Alastair McLellan, Editor of the Health Service Journal

The HSJ Awards took place on November 21st at Evolution, London at a ceremony hosted by Dara O'Briain. 

For over 44 years the HSJ Awards have sone a light on outstanding effors and achievements by healthcare workers across the entire sector.  This year 1351 entries were received, covering 26 categories with 235 organisations, projects and individuals making it to the final shortlist, following two rounds of rigorous judging. All finalists and winners were judged against five clear criteria:  ambition, outcome, spread, value and involvement (including how well stakeholders buy-in and contribute to the project initiatives and outcomes).

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