Early Help and Support for Families
Early Help Offer
What is early help?
Early help is ‘the total support that improves a family’s resilience and outcomes or reduces the chance of a problem getting worse’.
Early help focuses on identifying need and getting the right support at the right time to children and families that are struggling. This help might be in relation to a variety of early help needs, from practical to financial support, through to additional special educational needs and emotional wellbeing.
Early help assessment
EHA is the tool used to identify emerging needs for children and their families and coordinate a plan of support to meet these needs, aiming to prevent problems from becoming worse and to provide support to stop things escalating to crisis.
Any family can go through challenging times. Working with a trusted professional to complete an EHA should be a supportive process that is used to understand the whole family situation, to identify the strengths and needs of the children and adults in the family and to work together to create a plan to help the family help make changes.
An Early Help Assessment (EHA) typically addresses Level 2 (Early Help / Emerging Needs)
The four levels of need are:-
- Level 1: Universal Needs – Children making good overall progress; their needs are met by standard services like schools and GPs.
- Level 2: Early Help / Additional Needs – Children with emerging or low-to-medium-level needs that require extra, coordinated support via an EHA and a Team Around the Family (TAF) plan
- Level 3: Complex / Statutory Need – Children with high or complex needs requiring targeted statutory support, such as a Child in Need (CIN) plan under Section 17 of the Children Act
- Level 4: Acute / Severe Risk – Children at immediate risk of or suffering significant harm, requiring an urgent safeguarding response or child protection inquiries under Section 47
TAS - Team Around the School
A termly multi-agency meeting is a collaborative way of working across services, schools and settings with children and young people at the centre of all we do. The aim is to address issues that impact the education of our children and use this to signpost to alternative agencies if necessary.
The school is able to discuss concerns and/or needs during termly TAS meetings (parental consent is obtained beforehand).
The TAS consists of
School
School nurse
Family Support Worker
Stockport Homes
Other members can be invited depending on need
For more information please click here