Early Help
Early help is the term we use in Salford to describe the way we work together with children, young people and their families to prevent problems occurring and provide support as soon as problems emerge or re-emerge.
Families may need early help at any time because, as children develop, challenges can emerge. Equally, family circumstances can change, and families can need more support.
Evidence tells us the sooner a family receives help, the sooner they are able to improve their situation and prevent the need for longer term support or statutory intervention.
Early help in Salford is not a service provision but a collaborative approach. Our belief is that children, young people, and their families are best supported by people they know and trust. We know that most early help is provided by families, friends, neighbours, and communities, and these are central to our approach.
Where families need support, effective early help relies on local agencies working together in partnership with families to identify who in the family needs help and build on strengths and assets to empower families and enable them to thrive.
In Salford we use the ‘Thrive’ model to set out how the Partnership works together to ensure families get the right help at the right time.
It is everybody's responsibility to identify where children, young people and their families require help from services. The help families receive may be through a single agency or a multi-agency response as is appropriate to their needs. This means that families receive ‘The right help at the right time from the right person’.
The following shows how we put this into practice:
Notice where a child, young person or family needs help: A conversation with the child, young person and their family takes place to understand the issue. Additional support is provided from within the agency’s own organisation.
Identify that a child, young person and their family needs more help which cannot be met by a single agency alone: Help is provided through a multi-agency response, underpinned by an Early Help Assessment and managed through Team Around the Family arrangements. A ‘lead worker’ is identified to lead on the assessment and coordinate help through a single plan agreed with the family. Any practitioner working with a family can be the ‘lead worker’.
Identify that a child, young person and their family has more complex needs which require an integrated and coordinated multi-agency approach, with longer and more intensive intervention. A referral to The Bridge Partnership may be made.
Our partnership pledge:
We will act early to provide help and support to families who need it. By establishing good relationships with families, we will build on their strengths and community networks to enable them to thrive. Where families need help from services, we will work with the whole family using a relational approach that is:
- Strengths-based – builds on knowledge and resources of families
- Empowering – enables families to build resilience and independence
- Collaborative – we will work ‘WITH’ families not ‘DO TO’ them, and be non-judgmental
- Responsive – reflects the changing needs of families
- Proportionate – we will work with families for the right amount of time
- Transparent – we will share information with children, young people and their families, keeping them as informed as possible
- High support and high challenge – we will show professional curiosity in our work
More information
More information about our work in Salford can be found:
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