The NEST / NYTH Framework – supporting babies, children, young people & families

by Sharon Titley

Children’s Commissioning & Transformation Team

Powys County Council

NEST is a planning tool for Regional Partnership Boards across Wales, to support the development of a whole system approach to mental health and wellbeing support services who work with babies, children, young people, and families. The NEST Framework was created in collaboration with children, young people and families, alongside other professionals throughout Wales, ensuring that their voices are at the heart of what we do, and inform us how best to support them.

This video introduces the NEST framework:

Children, young people, and families that worked together to create the Framework adopted the term NEST. This is based on the notion that a NEST has a caring quality and contains many different levels. They liked the notion that all support services adhered to this theme, making sure that they all felt nurturing, empowering, safe, and trustworthy.

Some of the main aims of NEST are to:

• Broaden the conversation around mental health and move away from thinking that only specialist services can provide help.
• Provide access to expertise and advice more quickly and easily.
• Make sure that trusted adults closest to the child understand what they can do to help and give them the skills and confidence to do so.
• A ‘No Wrong Door’ approach to those who might need extra support.
• Giving babies, children, young people, and families the right help, at the right time, in the right way.

This is the NEST framework; the acronym is around the outside of the circle and then the stakeholders in the second circle. The white segments of the circle give us the 6 core principles of NEST. The inner circle contains the underpinning values of NEST which show the expectation of services and their strategic context being psychologically informed, adopting a children’s right based approach in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, respecting equality, and inclusion, being values led and being led by a child’s development rather than their age or predetermined stage.

Powys Regional Partnership Board recognises and welcomes the introduction of the NYTH NEST Framework:

“It emphasises that every relationship and every service need to work together to prioritise what is needed most if we are to build the foundations for positive mental health and wellbeing. These qualities are even more important for those who are struggling most, which is why it is about prevention AND intervention. The NEST Framework helps us keep an overview on how everything and everyone works together to achieve the best outcome.”

The RPB's Start Well Partnership is responsible for taking forward the Regional Partnership Board’s work to strengthen and transform services for children and young people in Powys as set out in Powys’ Health and Care Strategy and will therefore be leading on the implementation of NEST in Powys. Partners of the Start Well Board have developed a multi-agency model to respond to and support the emotional health and wellbeing needs of children and young people in Powys.

The Powys model recognises the importance of the community where a child lives, the schools they attend, as well as the important relationships in a child’s life which can be strengthened to support children and young people to prevent their needs from escalating into specialised mental health and statutory services. It also focusses on early intervention and prevention, a whole systems approach, which avoids duplication and allows for integrated access to service.

This model acknowledges that children and young people are more likely to communicate with adults that they know and trust. The need to focus on the adoption and embedding of early help offers has never been more important. It aims to bring about the kind of transformational change that children, young people, and their families tell us they want.

The ambition for every relationship and every environment to feel:

• Safe, nurturing base.
• Enabled to fly the nest.
• Return to the nest if need to.
• Unique to the individual.
• Builds on natural resources.
• Multi-layered.
• Same basic need for every child – but some need additional layers.
• Every interaction is an intervention.
• It is the little things that make the biggest difference.
• Culture shift away from ‘What is wrong with a child?’ towards asking ‘What is a child’s NEST like?’
  
  

How NEST is being implemented nationally

• Community of Practice.
• National Training Programme.
• A Self-Assessment and Implementation Tool.
• Aligning cross policy work.
• Regional Partnership Board Leads' meetings.
• Built into Regional Integration Fund.

How NEST is being implemented in Powys

Start Well Partnership met in October 2022 to develop a Powys Implementation Plan, which includes some of the following actions -

• Coordinating an initial NEST self-assessment across services working with babies, children, young people, and families.
• Supporting a culture change through developing a suite of training opportunities, as well as offering accessible training on values that enhance the framework e.g. Dr Treisman training.
• Defining areas of development e.g. improving coproduction and community engagement.
• A NEST Steering Group has been established to develop a collaborative approach to embedding the NEST Framework in Powys, bringing stakeholders together to develop a shared understanding of the sustainable long-term change that is required.

If you would like to learn more about the NEST Framework in Powys, or would like to discuss any training requirements, then please contact Sharon Titley – sharon.titley@powys.gov.uk

You can read about case studies, including the Development of the Team Around the Cluster Model in Powys, in the recent Welsh Government publication: 

“NYTH / NEST in action - Good Practice Examples of the implementation 

of the NYTH / NEST framework 2023.”

Black and white photographs by Myléne from Pixabay.