Early Help is support for children and families when problems first start. We bring together professionals who will listen and work with the family to help make things better for everyone.
Who is Early Help for?
Early Help is for everybody in the family, for children, young people and adults. It’s your choice whether to have it or not.
Why would I want Early Help?
You might be worried about your child, or you and your family might start to experience some changes or difficulties that you just can’t manage by yourself. Whatever it is, there are a number of ways that Early Help can support you and your family so that small problems don’t become big problems.
Getting help
If you feel you and your family might benefit from some support, you can approach someone in your life that you trust to find out more about Early Help. This could be your doctor, or a teacher at your child’s school. Or, if someone is worried that you’re having some problems, they might ask you if you would like to talk about Early Help and how it could benefit you.
Talking with you
If you choose Early Help, the professional will talk with you. More importantly, they will listen. They want to understand the challenges you and your family are facing. You can also talk about things that are going well for your family and any strengths that you’re proud of that can be built upon.
Consent
If you decide you’d like some help, the professional you talked with will ask if they can share details of your conversation. You need to be happy with this and give your permission. This is to make sure the people who will be supporting you are able to do a good job and understand the journey you and your family have been on.
Early Help assessment
The professional will ask about the extra support you might need and advise you on what is available. This is called an Early Help Assessment. This is nothing to worry about, it is just a conversation with the whole family, including your child or children about how everyone is feeling and how together we can stop small problems becoming big problems. Together you’ll agree what to write down so there is a record of what you talked about.
Your family action plan
You will be involved in creating your own family action plan to manage the issues you talked about with the professional. It will also determine your goals. You might also want to meet other people who might be able to help you and offer you a range of support. In this case you will be invited to a meeting with different people who could help your family from a wide range of services. This is called a Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting.
Review
This is where everyone will come back together and see how well the family action plan is working and if anything needs to change. At this stage everyone might decide that things have improved enough for Early Help to stop. Or if there are still things that your family needs, Early Help will continue to support you and your family and a further review date will be set.
