Soft Market Testing for Family Hub Services for Rutland County Council

The Council has launched a new Living Well Rutland Service that combines its library, health, wellbeing, and adult learning services into one. The Family Hub, which is part of Living Well Rutland, provides high quality play and learning sessions for children from vulnerable Rutland families alongside a programme of parenting support for adults.

As the Council develops its Living Well Rutland offer, the family hub element will provide a more focussed offer for families identified as needing extra support. This requires an understanding of their needs, how to engage them and flexibility in the delivery of services.

Family hubs hold relationships at the heart of service delivery. The ability to listen well and listen carefully to families, be curious about a child’s life within a family and understand the ‘world’ of not only the child but the parent too is essential. This will generate the greatest positive impact. If we can understand, we can support effectively and in a timely fashion. To do this we need consistency of delivery, quality, and staff. Children and their families need the opportunity to build trusted relationships to talk about support they may need.

Rutland County Council (the Council) is undertaking a soft market testing exercise, with the aim of providing information to and requesting feedback from the market, on its proposed model for delivery of Family Hub Services.