Early Help Offer
What is Early Help?
Every family has its ups and downs. Being a parent is hard work and there are no instructions. Sometimes, you or your children may need extra support. This may be before your children are born, when they are very young, or throughout their school years. There is nothing to be ashamed of in asking for help. Early Help helps you recognise what’s going well for you, where you may benefit from extra help, and who is the best person to work with you and your family to make this happen. This may be through an Early Help Assessment (EHA).
Early Help Assessment
This starts with an Early Help conversation. You’ll chat with our Family Support Worker about what’s going well and what’s not going well for you and your family, and they will let you know what sort of help is available. This conversation might lead to an Early Help Assessment (EHA). This is how we get a full picture about the whole family. We use it to help you see what is working well and identify the areas you could do with a bit of extra support. It‘s your choice to take part in the assessment and you can choose who else should be involved.
Every person and family is different, but an Early Help Assessment (EHA) will:
- Help you see what’s going well and not so well for your family
- Help you and others to see what support you might need
- Create a picture of your family’s circumstances, which can be shared with your permission so you don’t have to repeat yourself to different workers
- Help you to be part of a team of people working together on the same plan to get things going well again.
What happens after the EHA?
With your permission, people from different organisations working with your family will share information and work together to help support you and your children. This could be school, health visitors, mentors, nursery, etc. This may then be followed by a ‘Team around the family’ meeting.
Why do I need to give my permission
(also known as consent)?
Your personal information belongs to you. Agencies can’t share your information unless you agree, because your information is protected by law under the Data Protection Act.
What is a ‘Team around the family’ meeting?
The family and workers involved come together to make a support plan. This is reviewed at regular intervals to ensure that progress is being made for your family and that the right support is in place. At this meeting, you’ll choose a ‘lead worker’. This can be any one of the people working with your family – you might choose the worker you see most often, or the person you find most approachable. Your lead worker will arrange the review meetings and be someone you can speak to at any point about any concerns or issues you and your family are experiencing.
At Ripley Infant School we meet the needs of our children through a variety of ways.
We have an open door policy to communicate, providing time to talk to all parents, children and families, to ensure all children are safe, happy and learning.
- We are available to talk via telephone, Tapestry messages, direct email and face to face, and provide time for our parents to communicate and work with us e.g. through Parent Consultations and good daily availability.
- Our children are actively encouraged to speak about any concerns they have to a member of staff. They know that our staff take all concerns very seriously and they know that they can speak to any responsible adult in school.
- Children can put worries into the Worry Monsters/Worry Boxes in each classroom.
- We have an effective PSHE curriculum which supports children and develops key skills, not only for school, but for life.
We work more closely with families and children who need extra support. We put in place intervention in school to support children who need it, be this for academic or mental well-being.
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EHAs help identify the specific needs of our children and families, so that they can be assigned to the correct interventions for their educational, social, physical and emotional needs.
The Head Teacher manages the allocation of pupils to intervention and support groups.
- We can refer children to the school nursing team. You can speak directly with the school nurse team or we can refer you as a school.
- Access to relevant agencies will be signposted if appropriate to enable good attendance.
We signpost families and seek support from different support agencies. There are a number of support agencies out there who we can access or signpost you to if you are experiencing difficulties at home. There are also agencies which can be contacted independently should you wish to do so, who might be able to help and provide the support for your family:
- Family Support Worker
- Local Community Police Officers
- Mental Health Team
We will also seek further support from services to best support our families.
To speak to our family support worker please call or text 07951 331186
The Designated Safeguarding Lead will work with parents and children and families services to organise additional support when required. Support could involve:
- Children and families team
- Multi-agency safeguarding team
- Safeguarding children board
- Social workers
Helplines
Police 999 in an emergency or 101 for a non-emergency situation
National Domestic Violence helpline: 0808 2000 247
National Centre for Domestic Abuse: 0844 8044 999
CARP: 0845 602 9035 providing advice for victims of domestic violence
www.childnet.com/resources - e-safety
www.thinkuknow.co.uk - e-safety