Early Help Support for Families
Early Help Support for Families
Early Help is a way of describing the extra support you and your family can access if you need it. There are lots of reasons why you might need a bit of extra support and it’s OK to ask for help.
Early Help isn’t one service; it’s all about bringing you and your family together with services and people that can support you.
There are lots of reasons why people might want early help. It could be that you’re worried about your child’s health, development, behaviour, or how they’re doing at school. You may be worried about money or housing, and how that is affecting your family. There may be worries within your home life that are affecting you and your child(ren).
Whatever your concerns, early help is all about you and your family being supported so that small problems don’t become big problems.
What is an early help plan?
In York we use Our Family Support Needs and Plan. This document is a way of exploring with you and your family what you would like support with. This can help you to see:
- What is going well for you and your family
- What you may need help with and who, or which services, can help you
This plan can help pull together the people and services supporting you and your family. As part of the process, you all agree how you will be supported, and this can help ensure everyone is working together and with you.
Our Family Support Needs and Plan - How does it work?
Your chance to tell your story
A worker you trust will talk with you about your family and any difficulties you’re facing. Ideally, this will be somebody already supporting you or your children. With your permission, they will contact other services working with your family to ask what support they are providing or could provide. This information will be brought together in this document for you to reflect on with your lead worker.
Your plan
This information will help create your plan; this will identify what you and your family need help with and who can help you. Support can be a variety of things; it may be signposting or a referral to a service, helping you or a family member develop skills and strategies, parenting support and courses, navigating complex processes or identifying practical solutions to problems.
Next steps
To make sure everything is going well, you can have review meetings. These meetings are to check in with you and the services supporting you, to review your plan. Everyone will discuss what’s going well and any existing or new needs that you would like support with. Based on this, your plan will be updated. Review meetings continue for as long as you agree your family would like support.
Lead Worker - Your 'go to' person ...
The lead worker can be anyone who is supporting your family. Their role is to make sure all the people supporting your family are talking to each other and to you. They will lead the meetings that review your plan. These are called Team Around the Familly meetings. You can speak to them to discuss any concerns or issues that you or your family may be experiencing.
How can you find out more?
In the first instance, talk to a worker or service which you or your family are accessing. This could be a worker in your child’s school, nursery or a health professional, for example. Let them know if you think a Family Support Needs and Plan might be helpful. They might be the person who could be lead worker, or they might help you find an appropriate lead worker.
You can also contact York’s Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub on 01904 551900 or [email protected]
