What is Early Help?

School works to provide Early Help to those children and families in the school community with emerging needs, which may not be appropriate for Social Services intervention, but require some support. Early Help means providing support to our children and families as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life.

Lancashire's Early Help Offer is aligned to Part 1 and 2 of Lancashire working well with children and families Guidance. https://www.lancashiresafeguarding.org.uk/media/19299/wwwcf-part-1-and-2-final.pdf

 

Our Aims

To work to families' strengths and taking time to understand their needs fully.

To focus on preventing problems before they occur and try to offer flexible, responsive support when and where it's required.

 

Successful Early Help Will Mean:

Children: · are physically and emotionally healthy · are resilient and able to learn well · are supported by their families, community and (when necessary) professionals in order to thrive · live in safe environments

Parents and Carers: · support one another in the community · know where to get help if needed · have trusted relationships with school, community, other parents· are well informed about how best to help their child develop and motivated to make great choices.

 

At Blessed Trinity we use the Lancashire ‘Level of Need’ as a basis to our ‘Early Help’:

 

 

 

As part of this work, we use the Lancashire Early Help Assessment framework, this helps school to work in partnership with a family from a holistic and strength-based approach to families, to gather information about all aspects of the child (and their family’s) life. This helps us identify areas where support can positively impact on their life experiences.

 

What is Early Help?

Early Help in Lancashire is the vision of all partner organisations working with children and families, to improve children’s lives by working in partnership to raise aspirations, build achievement and protect the most vulnerable.

There is clear evidence that early help results in better outcomes for children.

A key objective of Early help is to provide information, advice and access to services at the right time to meet a family's needs and to support them in resolving concerns as soon as they emerge.

Support can be delivered from a wide range of services depending on what is needed; people already working with your family might offer additional help or support so that you can access more specialist or targeted services.

Where additional support is required Year Leaders Early Help support from the Locality Teams will work with a family to understand their needs and create a plan of support to promote positive change.

 

What Does Early Help support do?

Support covers a range of services from mental health, education concerns, Parenting conflict and healthy relationships.

 

Why would I want early help?

There are lots of reasons why people look for early help. It could be that you’re worried about your child’s health, development or behaviour, or how they’re doing at school. It may be that you’re worried about money or housing and how that is affecting your family. Maybe your child or family is affected by domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol, or crime. Perhaps your child is a carer for their SEND sibling, or maybe you’ve had a bereavement in the family that’s made life a challenge.

 

What will happen when I ask for early help?

Year Leaders will meet with you to discuss the problems you’re experiencing. They will ask what help and support you think you might need. Early help assessment is nothing to be worried about. It’s just a conversation to work out how to help you determine what it is you feel you need support with and how this can be done.

What happens next will be different for every family. If you decide you’d like some help, the person you talked with will ask if they can share details of your conversation with the appropriate agencies. You need to be happy with this and give your consent. This is to make sure the people who will be supporting you are able to understand the journey you and your family have been on.

If an Early Help assessment is completed and actions are identified we will then call "Team Around the Family" (TAF) meetings. Again this is nothing to be worried about. It just ensures we have a regular meeting with all professionals involved to get the best outcome for the family.

Through the Early Help Assessment, plan, and reviews via TAF meetings the wider partnership of services can provide families with the right support at the right time.

All of this is consent based. If consent is withdrawn then the process stops.