3.3 Universal Services and Community-based Early Help

1. Universal Services and Community-based Early Help

Universal services and community-based early help is support for children of all ages that improves a family’s resilience and outcomes or reduces the chance of a problem getting worse. It is not an individual service, but a system of support delivered by local authorities and their partners working together and taking collective responsibility to provide the right provision in their area. This level of early help is provided through “universal services” – such as education, health – and other community-based services. It is distinct from targeted early help delivered through Family Help teams, which are more formal arrangements coordinated by local authorities, where a plan is in place and a lead practitioner appointed.  See Family Help chapter.

Specific universal and community-based early help services can include support delivered through Best Start Family Hubs, youth services, youth offending teams, breakfast clubs, after school clubs and routine health and housing provision. Best Start Family Hubs bring together practitioners from multi-agency partners, with a strong emphasis on health and education – particularly during the early years – creating a clear local parent pathway from pregnancy through to the age of 19 (or 25 for young people with SEND), connecting families to services across the full spectrum of need. Hubs work closely with other local children’s services to safeguard children and help families facing complex problems, in particular those who are supported in Family Help, such as families where domestic abuse is a factor. As a community-based model for providing early help to families, Hubs play an important role in delivering intensive evidence-based interventions for parenting, and identifying families who may need more intensive support from Family Help and multiagency child protection teams.

For families who no longer require the support of targeted and specialist services, Hubs and other forms of community-based setting can offer an ongoing, local support network, by providing early help, and playing an important role in early identification of family need, making appropriate referrals into targeted support.

Hubs can act as a non-stigmatising gateway to targeted whole-family support delivered through Family Help, with a shared ambition to strengthen the end-to-end system of support for and around families.  Integrating BSFHs with Family Help can help support earlier engagement, build sustained relationships, co-locate multi-disciplinary teams and ensure continuity of support as family needs change.

The Families First Programme Guide sets out that local areas should build on the strengths of their universal and community based early help delivery models and workforce when designing their approach to Family Help. Voluntary and community services are also a vital part of the end-to-end system, and their contribution should be recognised and valued. This is particularly important for families and communities that may be wary of, or unaware of, the services available to them, or have difficulty accessing services, such as those living in rural communities.

2. The Role of Early Education and Childcare Settings, Schools, Colleges and Other Education Providers

All children aged 5 to 16 are legally entitled to a full-time education, suitable to any special educational need. Education is essential for children’s progress, wellbeing and wider development and being in school is a protective factor against wider harms, including exploitation. Where children are not receiving education, either because they are persistently missing school, or are not registered at a school and not receiving a suitable education otherwise, this could be a possible indicator of neglect, abuse or exploitation or could in itself constitute neglect in severe and sustained cases.

Young people aged 16 and 17, including those with special and educational needs and disabilities, are required to participate in education or training until they reach their 18th birthday. They are entitled to an offer of a suitable place in education or training under the September Guarantee. Local authorities are therefore expected to identify and pay particular attention to young people who are not in education, employment or training or whose current activity is not known.

Local authorities also have a statutory duty to secure sufficient suitable education and training provision for all young people aged 16 to 19 and for those up to age 25 with a learning difficulty assessment or, EHC plan, in their area. They should make available to young people aged 13 to 19 and to those up to the age of 25 with a learning difficulty assessment or EHC plan, support that will encourage, enable or assist them to participate in education or training.

As early education and childcare settings, schools, colleges and other education providers have daily contact with most children and families, they are uniquely placed to identify concerns and, with partners as appropriate, address them early. Safeguarding professionals, including safeguarding partners and their delegates, should work closely with education and childcare settings to ensure information about children is shared effectively, risks of harm are correctly identified and understood, and children and families receive the services they need. This includes, but is not limited to, information, such as increased absence or mental health problems, which may be indicators that a child has suffered or is at risk of suffering neglect, abuse, and exploitation.

Education and childcare settings will often have the strongest relationships with children, young people and their families and be the first to identify when help or protection is needed. These settings should have a clearly defined and integrated role within multiagency safeguarding arrangements (MASAs) giving them a stronger voice in Safeguarding Partnerships and ensuring that they are strategic partners in local decision making and safeguarding responses.

Those working in these settings need to be aware of how children’s experiences can impact on their mental health, behaviour, attendance and progress at nursery, school, or college. Where children have suffered abuse, neglect and exploitation, or other potentially traumatic adverse childhood experiences, this can have a lasting impact throughout childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.  This should include understanding the impact of domestic abuse on children as victims in their own right.

For the most vulnerable children, regular attendance is also an important protective factor and the best opportunity for needs to be identified and support provided. Education and childcare settings therefore may be able to offer support directly to families, connect them with other local services that provide more targeted support, have continued contact with a family to monitor progress or change, and know when to escalate to seek further input, intervention or oversight.

Education settings are also vital in recognising underlying causes of severe absence and children missing education which can act as vital warning signs to a range of safeguarding issues including domestic abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and child sexual and criminal exploitation. Improving attendance is everyone’s business and the barriers to accessing education are wide and complex, both within and beyond the school gates, and are often specific to individual pupils and families. Live attendance data is therefore one of the best early-warning indicators of need, particularly where pupils are absent more often than they attend.  Alongside expectations in statutory attendance guidance, partnerships should consider how:

• families with severely absent pupils are factored into local eligibility decisions: if pupils face out-of-school barriers and the family do not have a social worker, they should routinely be assessed for Family Help;
• Family Help contributes to the expectation that schools and local authorities agree a joint approach for all severely absent pupils;
• practitioners understand the importance of absence as an indicator of wider need, the benefits of improving attendance to improve outcomes for the whole family, and the role of the Virtual School Head for children with a social worker.

Areas should also liaise with education teams to ensure they are aware of issues relating to the needs of children who are not on a school roll, for example children missing from education or electively home educated children.

It is important where children are home educated that relevant information is shared between local authorities, schools, colleges, and other relevant partners. This includes police forces making Operation Encompass notifications, as they would for other educational settings, to the local authority in which the child who is being home educated lives. Parents have a right to educate their children at home providing the education is suitable. Most parents who take up the weighty responsibility of home education work hard to provide their child with a suitable education. However, the local authority has a duty to intervene where a home educated child is not being suitably educated, or is not safe, and in such cases the local authority must act to remedy the situation. When a child of school age is not a registered pupil at a school and is not receiving suitable education at home, this could be an indicator of neglect, abuse, or exploitation. Schools must notify the local authority of a child’s removal from the school roll at a non-standard transition point, and they should also share information on a child’s circumstances, especially if already known to children’s social care or if they have an EHC plan.