3.3 Early Help

1. Introduction

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. Some early help is provided through ‘universal services’ such as education, family centres and health services. They are universal services because they are available to all families, regardless of their needs. Other early help services are coordinated by a local authority and / or their partners to address specific concerns within a family and can be described as targeted early help. Examples of these include parenting support, mental health support, youth services, youth offending teams and housing and employment services. Early help may be appropriate for children and families who have several needs, or whose circumstances might make them more vulnerable. It is a voluntary approach, requiring the family’s consent to receive support and services offered. These may be provided before and/or after statutory intervention.

Effective provision relies upon local organisations and agencies working together, and may include:

• identifying children and families who would benefit from early help;
• undertaking an assessment of the need for early help which considers the needs of all members of the family;
• promoting good ongoing communication, for example, through regular meetings between practitioners who are working with the family;
• co-ordination and / or providing support as part of a plan to improve outcomes. This plan will be developed together with the child and family, and updated as and when the child and family needs change;
• effective engagement with families and their family network, making use of family group decision-making, such as family group conferences, to help meet the needs of the child;
• promote and raise awareness of the Family Hub Network which provides advice and guidance through numerous community-based locations

Where appropriate, a lead practitioner should co-ordinate the activity around the family, ensure the assessment and the family plan responds to all needs identified, and lead on ensuring the family co-produce the plan.

2. Identifying Children and Families who Would Benefit from Help

Local organisations and agencies should have in place effective ways to identify emerging problems and potential unmet needs of individual children and families. Local authorities should work with organisations and agencies to develop joined-up early help services. In Buckinghamshire, the Family Hub Network brings together early help providers. to support communities, based on a clear understanding of local needs supported by the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and Early Help Partnership to inform their partnership early help offer.

Multi-agency and multi-disciplinary training will be important in supporting this collective understanding of the demographics and needs of the local community, the local practice framework, and the services available to support children. All practitioners working with children and families, including those in universal services and those providing services to adults with children, need to understand their role in identifying emerging problems and work together to prevent things from getting worse. They need appropriate training so that they:

• know when to share information with other practitioners and what action to take to support early identification and assessment;
• are able to identify and recognise all forms of abuse, neglect, and exploitation;
• have an understanding of domestic and sexual abuse, including controlling and coercive behaviour as well as parental conflict that is frequent, intense, and unresolved;
• are aware of new and emerging threats, including online harm, grooming, sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, radicalisation, and the role of technology and social media in presenting harm;
• are aware that a child and their family may be experiencing multiple needs at the same time.

Practitioners should be alert to the potential need for early help for a child who:

• is disabled;
• has special educational needs (whether or not they have a statutory education, health and care (EHC) plan);
• is a young carer;
• is bereaved;
• is showing signs of being drawn into anti-social or criminal behaviour, including being affected by gangs and county lines and organised crime groups and / or serious violence, including knife crime;
• is frequently missing / goes missing from care or from home;
• is at risk of modern slavery, trafficking, sexual and / or criminal exploitation;
• is at risk of being radicalised;
• is viewing problematic and / or inappropriate online content (for example, linked to violence), or developing inappropriate relationships online;
• is in a family circumstance presenting challenges for the child, such as drug and alcohol misuse, adult mental health issues and domestic abuse;
• is misusing drugs or alcohol themselves;
• is suffering from mental ill health;
• has returned home to their family from care;
• is a privately fostered child;
• has a parent or carer in custody;
• is missing education, or persistently absent from school, or not in receipt of full time education;
• has experienced multiple suspensions and is at risk of, or has been permanently excluded.

The Early Help Partnership promotes a shared approach to practitioner training and development, through shared access to a wide range of early help training.

3. The Role of Education and Childcare Settings

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 education and childcare settings 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.

Those working in education and childcare 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.

It is important where children are home educated that relevant information is shared between local authorities, schools, colleges, and other relevant partners. Parents have a right to educate their children at home providing the education is suitable. 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.

4. Effective Assessment of the Need for Early Help

Where a child and family would benefit from co-ordinated support from more than one organisation or agency (for example, education, health, housing) there should be a multi-agency assessment. These assessments should:

• be undertaken with the agreement of the child and their parents or carers, involving the child and family as well as all the practitioners who are working with them;
• take account of the child’s wishes and feelings wherever possible which could include providing advocacy support where this is needed to enable a child to share their views, for example, if the child has communication difficulties due to a disability;
• take account of the child’s age, family circumstances and extra-familial contexts and whether these factors are contributing to or preventing good outcomes;
• take account of the needs of all members of the family as individuals and consider how their needs impact on one another which includes considering needs relating to education, early years development, mental health and physical health, substance misuse, financial stability, housing, family relationships, domestic abuse and crime. Practitioners should be aware of situations where there has been a breakdown in relationship between the child and their family and engaging the whole family may not be appropriate;
• cover both presenting needs and any underlying issues with the understanding that a family’s needs can change overtime, for example, when a child moves up to secondary school;
• be based on facts, and explore and build on strengths;
• be clear about the action to be taken and services to be provided;
• identify what help the child and family require to prevent needs escalating;
• provide the basis for any future assessments if they are needed, for example, under sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989.

Practitioners should have consideration for specific needs, including, but not exclusive to, family members who may have learning difficulties / disabilities or those whose first language is not English, are care experienced, young parents, fathers or male carers, and parents who identify as LGBT.

If a family does not consent to an early help assessment, practitioners should seek to understand why this is the case, so that they can provide reassurance to the family about their concerns. They should ensure the family has understood the consensual nature of support, and range of services available to meet their needs. The practitioner should consider how the needs of the child could otherwise be met, for example, through provision by universal services that the family already engages with. Practitioners should still inform individuals that their data will be recorded and shared, and the purpose of this explained to them. If a family has chosen not to engage with support in the past, this should not act as a barrier to them accessing support in the future. If at any time it is considered that the child may be a child in need, as defined in the Children Act 1989, a referral should be made to children’s social care. Practitioners should ensure that the family has understood that the support and services provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 and are consensual. If there are concerns that the child has suffered significant harm or is likely to do so, a referral should be made immediately to local authority children’s social care.

5. Provision of Effective Services to Help Families

Good practice should ensure effective join up between specific local early help services and universal services to ensure families can seamlessly transition from universal to more specialist support should a specific need be identified. The Family Hub Network provides a wide range of universal and Level 2 support for children, young people and families and provides a pathway into higher tier services where required. There should be an explicit link to the local area’s offer of short breaks for disabled children, as well as suitably adjusted services to support parents. Evidence should be collated to show their impact, including on those with a particular protected characteristic.

Specific local early help services typically include family and parenting programmes, assistance with school attendance, assistance with health issues including mental health, enabling financial stability, supporting secure housing, responses to emerging concerns in extra-familial contexts, responding to a parent in custody, and help for emerging problems relating to domestic abuse, drug or alcohol misuse. In Buckinghamshire, the Family Hub Network brings together early help providers to support communities as a place-based way of joining-up the planning and delivery of family support services, offering a universal access points for children and families.

Early help services may also focus on improving family functioning and building the family’s own capability to establish positive routines and solve problems. This should be done within a structured, evidence-based practice framework, which is shared across the early help partnership and involves regular review to ensure that real progress is being made. Where family networks are supporting the child and parents, it might be appropriate to use family group decision-making to support work with the family. Some of these services may be delivered directly to parents but should always be evaluated to demonstrate the impact they are having on the outcomes for the child.