Early Help Partnership

The key to ensuring our children, young people and their families receive the right help at the right time is how we work together.

We are committed to providing effective, proportionate and high quality Early Help, supporting families to have their needs met in their local community

Our partnership approach is to provide:

• a whole system approach
• a consistent approach
• an inclusive and enabling approach, led by children, young people and families
• a strength based approach
• an honest and ambitious approach
• a local based approach
• a learning and reflective approach

See our Right Help Right Time guidance.

For some children, young people, and their families, the desired positive outcomes will not be achieved—despite planned and combined interventions from both universal and Early Help services.

These cases will need to be escalated (stepped up) requiring either a multi-agency Early Help intervention (level 3) or statutory children’s social care specialist intervention (level 4).

The desired outcome is that all interventions are proportionate to the family’s needs. They should also be at the appropriate threshold level to have the maximum impact in terms of supporting the children, young people and their family to achieve positive outcomes and sustained change.

Where there is a need for a step-up, the child, young person and family should experience this as a seamless process. The gains from both a multi-agency Early Help and/or children social care intervention must be sustained.

Key relationships have to be maintained as this is always in the child and young person’s best interest.

See our step up step down guidance.

As a professional, if you have concerns about children and young people and their family, you should be open and honest about this. Talk with parents/carers, and the children and young people about these concerns.

The multi-agency intervention, assessment and plan can and will only be completed with the families consent. This is their assessment, and they need to be at the heart of the planning of support.

If consent is not given by the family, be honest about your concerns. Continue to provide the single agency support, review and discuss, if needed, the level 3 multi-agency support and its benefits.

Once the family consent to completing the Early Help Pathway and receiving Early Help support, please complete the pathway with the family.

The pathway considers strengths and needs of the family. Critically, it records their concerns and what they want help with.

You should complete the EH Pathway in full to prevent any delay in the screening/decision making process. If it's sent in with significant sections missing, it will be returned to you and you will be asked to complete it. This will cause delay.

Remember for multi-agency Early Help support, there should be evidence of two or more of our supporting families priority needs evidenced.

A lead professional is a key role that ensures we are effectively working with and delivering co-ordinated support to children, young people and their families. It's someone that truly holds the baton for children and young people in Walsall.

The lead professional will act as a single point of contact. They will be someone that the child or young person and their family can trust, who is able to support them in making choices and in navigating their way through various pathways for support available.

The lead professional will:

• co-ordinate services from differing agencies, ensuring children and young people receive appropriate and agreed interventions, which are:
  • well planned
  • regularly reviewed
  • effectively delivered
  • making the required impact
• lead the coordination of and influence the Early Help process holding partners to account on agreed actions

The role is vital, not onerous. Through the Early Help Partnership it formalises the responsibilities across multi agency working.

The purpose of the role is to make clear to the children, young people, families and partners what support will be provided, by whom, by when and to lead a solution focused outcome and time limited action plan.

Everyone will have a responsibility to keep the lead professional informed of all changes in circumstances.

As part of our partnership support there is a bespoke Lead Professional training course, delivered by the Early Help Partnership Officers.

The Early Help Assessment (EHA)

The EHA will:

• identify the challenges the family are faced with
• identify the support available to them to help the whole family reach their full potential

It can also:

• improve the quality of a child’s home and family life
• enable a child to perform better at school
• support emotional health and wellbeing

It should be completed in partnership with the child/young person and their parents/carers. The assessment is used to agree next steps in order to access appropriate early help support and co-ordinate services. This is primarily intended to be used for a multi-agency assessment, however could also be used for a single agency assessment.

This is a form within MOSAIC and should be completed by the lead professional, if you have access.

If you do not have access to MOSAIC your locality Early Help Partnership Officer will ensure it is uploaded. Please send all paper copies to them directly via secure email.

The EHA should be completed in full within 20 working days of the contact/referral being received.

Early Help plan and review

The plan will help the development of the agreed support and associated actions that will be provided to the family, the plan must always be developed in conjunction with the family.

This is a form within MOSAIC and should be completed by the lead professional, if you have access.

If you do not have access to MOSAIC your locality Early Help Partnership Officer will ensure it is uploaded. Please send all paper copies to them directly via secure email.

The Early Help plan should be reviewed at least every 6 weeks. A review meeting should be held, chaired by the family and lead professional. During the meeting, all partners should provide an update on the agreed actions, share the strengths within the family, the impact of the support and any further challenges the family face that need further or additional support.

Before the end of each review meeting an agreed date and venue should be agreed scheduled for the next review.

If, as a partner involved in the delivery of support, you are unable to attend the review meeting there is an expectation that you will provide a written update. This report should be shared with the family prior to the meeting. If you fail to do this, the lead professional will escalate their concerns to the Early Help group manager and to your manager. 

Early Help closure

This form should be completed when:

• the family and other practitioners are satisfied that the multi-agency support has enabled the family to make positive changes and no longer requires this level of intervention (you may be stepping down to a single agency or closing completely)
• the family move out of the area and therefore Early Help is no longer required
• the family, for some reason (and this should be rare) withdraw consent to Early Help

The closure should be:

• a reflective summary of the reason for involvement (the presenting needs at referral)
• the intervention provided
• the impact of the intervention
• any outstanding support that will be stepped down to a single agency to oversee, which services have been involved in the Early Help support and the reason for closure

You should also add a summary as the lead professional reflection of the support and its impact, the families’ reflection of the support and its impact.

Once this has been completed, this should be kept on the child/young person’s file by the lead professional and also uploaded to MOSAIC if you have access.

This is a form within MOSAIC and should be completed by the lead professional, if you have access.

If you do not have access to MOSAIC your locality Early Help Partnership Officer will ensure it is uploaded, please send all paper copies to them directly via secure email.

What happens next?

The Early Help locality manager or partnership officer will review the closure. They may discuss with you any outstanding actions they feel need addressing before closure. Or, if they are satisfied, they will sign off the closure.

Once this has been completed, a feedback questionnaire for parents/carers to complete will be generated and sent to you. Please ask for parents and carers feedback, as it is essential to help to see what’s going well or how we can make improvements to the support we provide.