Welcome
We are delighted to launch Connect Somerset, to improve early help in the community. Connect Somerset is about all professionals and community groups working together to help families and residents to improve their lives.
Connect Somerset is a partnership between Somerset Council, Somerset NHS, Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprises, Schools, Colleges and Early Years settings.
Blueprint for Connect Somerset
This blueprint shows how we want to evolve public sector early help for Somerset families and residents.
Improving the early help system in the right way will significantly reduce costs to acute services across care, health, education and justice sectors. As well as having a big impact on the lives of Somerset residents.
Connect Somerset Champions
We have appointed Connect Somerset Area Champions who are leaders from their communities to re-shape public services. This removes barriers and blockers, so professionals can work more easily and closely together.
Easy access to early help
We want to make it easier for families and residents to access the help they need earlier. It is important for families and residents to be able to access early help when they need it. We have lots of excellent services, online help and community resources but not everyone knows how to access them. It’s only by helping more families access early help when they need it, that we can help them build their resilience and stop their needs escalating.
More support will be delivered from hubs across the county, with services closer to home and rooted in communities. Local delivery is coordinated from 12 Connect Somerset hubs which are linked to neighbourhoods, local community networks, primary care networks and social prescribing.
Improvements to sharing information
We will continue to make improvements to share information across services, so multi-agency professionals and community groups can wrap support around families and residents.
And we will bring together databases of local community resources so that they are easier to search. Professionals can then link our most vulnerable families into what makes them more resilient.
Working together
Overall, Connect Somerset is about how we all work together, wrap support around families and residents, and make sure everyone can access the help they need in the community as early as they need it.
Connect Somerset Steering Group
The Connect Somerset Steering Group steers the programme to deliver more efficient early help in the community.
Connect Somerset is a system change programme which spans many organisations and the 20,000 to 30,000 professionals working in the early help sector in Somerset.
The Steering Group is also multi-agency and helps to navigate this complex landscape delivering the programme successfully to improve outcomes for families and residents.
The Steering Group’s Purpose is to:
- Make sure the programme has the the biggest impact on outcomes for families and residents.
- Encourage local variance, testing and learning whilst ensuring a coherent and equitable county-wide programme.
- Have oversight of the programme plan, risks, finances and strategy.
- Promote and support Connect Somerset and the programme aims in our own organisations and across the partnership and resolve barriers to progress.
- Help navigate system complexity across many providers, communities and geographies.
- Monitor delivery of activities to ensure alignment with identified priorities and to measure performance against agreed objectives.
