Relationships Really Matter: 5. What Help Can I Get Locally?

Quotes from local parents who have told us about their experience when they’ve used services in Nottinghamshire.

What help is there locally if we are worried about our relationship and how this affects our children?

Relationships Really Matter Parents/Carers Group

The group supports parents/carers to understand the impacts of grown-up arguments and disagreements on children, and to communicate and cooperate better. To register for the group, just send an email to ReduceParentalConflict@nottscc.gov.uk with your phone numbers.

Nottinghamshire County Council is commissioning OnePlusOne which is a leading research charity with over 50 years’ experience in creating evidence-based resources to support the development of healthy relationships. It provides interactive digital resources that raise awareness of the impact of stress and conflict on children, giving parents/carers the skills to manage conflict more constructively and parent co-operatively.

Visit: https://oneplusone.org.uk/parents

OnePlusOne provides three courses:

For further information about these courses click on the flyers below:

Visit: https://oneplusone.org.uk/parents

All you need is to register by selecting Sign up England, the Central England map and Nottinghamshire. Fill in an email account and a password according to the instructions. After registration, you can choose the course that best relates to your circumstances. However, you can access all three digital courses.

If you need any further advice or support, please contact Reducing Parental Conflict Team:

Email: ReduceParentalConflict@nottscc.gov.uk;

or call 01158040517

Before you have your baby and when baby arrives:

If you are worried about your relationship with your partner when you are pregnant, please speak to your Midwife or Healthy Families Practitioner (health visitor). They can reassure you that it’s a normal part of adjusting to having a new baby in your lives and will be able to suggest ideas to make things a little easier.

One of the things you could do is to ask them to link you into your local Children’ Centre Service team, who have lots of experience in supporting families to adjust to having a little one. They use an approach called Me, You and Baby Too, that has lots of practical tips. They also offer PHEW sessions– that stands for Parents Health and Emotional Wellbeing – this could be meeting with a small group of other new parents or one to one with a worker. Another support could be the BABES group – that’s Baby and Breastfeeding Encouragement Support – which is available to mums to be and breastfeeding mums. During the pandemic lots of support is available virtually.

You can contact the Children’s Centre Service yourself – for information take a look at www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/childrenscentreservice or complete the Request for Service form

It quickly became clear that our tendency to resort to destructive communication was having a toxic impact on our relationship, and ultimately our family. The course taught us new life skills through engaging material and thought provoking activities that has since made communication between us more constructive. It was interesting to use this new knowledge and look back upon previous differences in our relationship to identify improvements and areas for compromise.

Parents with children under 5 years:

Family life with pre-school children is very busy, with lots of areas for potential disagreement between parents around things like behaviour, sleep routines, fussy eating and toilet training. Sometimes it can feel like you can’t agree on anything! Contact your local Children’s Centre Service Team if you’d like some support to learn how to tackle these everyday challenges. During the pandemic lots of support is available virtually.

Contact details are at www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/childrenscentreservice or complete the Request for Service form

The course was an excellent platform for us to approach some difficult subjects in a cooperative and constructive way and identify ways to approach them more positively in future.

Parents with school aged children and teenagers:

Lots of schools have support workers who can work with families on a range of different things – it’s worth asking at your child’s school if they have any help they can give you, as they will be keen to help you give your child a happy home environment as this affects how they learn and behave in school as well as out of school. If they don’t have anything available, you could ask them to refer your family to the Early Help Unit. There’s a simple online form they can complete on your behalf.

We learnt effective communication by doing small tasks together, putting effective communication wordings together, and identifying what unhelpful communication was too. We covered how 'you' and 'I' statements work better in relationships which enabled us to both open up more positively. Our children have picked up on this and it has positively impacted on their communication skills too.

Families of any age children, who need any further information or advice about which services are available, can contact Notts County Council's Early Help Unit.

Contact details for the Early Help Unit:

Telephone: 0115 804 1248 Email: early.help@nottscc.gov.uk

EPEC – Empowering Parents Empowering Communities

In Nottinghamshire, we are proud to be part of the EPEC network – where trained parent volunteers work with other parents to support them with their parenting challenges and understand that there is no such thing as the perfect parent.

There are 2 programmes delivered locally “Being a Parent” and “Being a Parent Together”, offered by the Children’s Centre Service (for under 5s) and the Family Service (for over 5s).

For more information on EPEC – take a look at the videos in the Your Child's Behaviour section of the Parent/Carer Zone

If you’d like to know more about EPEC please contact the EPEC Co-ordinators.

If you are a family with under 5s and over 5s and want to talk about EPEC, please contact the service that works with the age group of the child you are most concerned about.

EPEC Co-ordinators Contacts

County-wide: For families with children under 5
Email: EPEC@nottscc.gov.uk

Alice Lavender: Nottinghamshire County Council, North (Bassetlaw, Newark and Sherwood) For families with children over 5
Work Mobile: 07773 947 714, Email: alice.lavender@nottscc.gov.uk

Jennifer Creighton: Nottinghamshire County Council, South (Gedling, Rushcliffe and Broxtowe): For families with children over 5
Work Mobile: 07773661063 , Email: jennifer.creighton@nottscc.gov.uk

Elise Bottomley: Nottinghamshire County Council, West (Mansfield and Ashfield): For families with children over 5
Work Mobile: 07824 406 563, Email: elise.bottomley@nottscc.gov.uk