Haringey’s integrated response to support families in need of Early Help

Haringey’s Early Help and Prevention Service are pleased to announce the launch of ‘Prevention Through Partnership’ – a multi-agency collaboration of support services that responds to families at a Tier 2 threshold, under London Safeguarding Children’s Board guidelines. At the heart of this offer, is the objective of helping Schools and Early Years settings draw in services to support the families you work with, by providing a menu of interventions available locally. This offer does not replace or deter from any existing process or offer from the Local Authority to work with families who meet the threshold for a Family Support Worker from the Early Help and Prevention Service. It complements this core offer and is intended to support your settings with building resilience to work together to deliver help at the earliest point and start to build a Team Around the Family that will hopefully reduce the risk of any escalation or need for further services later on.

This work has been steered through the efforts of a working party involving Early Help, Community Safety, CAMHS, Public Health, School Nursing, Police, Department for Work and Pensions, Violence Against Women and Girls coordinator, Insights Drug and Alcohol Service, the Anchor Project, Economic Development, Early Years Advisory Services and relevant services to support early years. The combined expertise of this group has been invaluable and they have each put forward their own unique offer and with that offer, comes the commitment to you to deliver the help you request. Part of the process to develop the menu included stakeholder engagement with a group of Head Teachers of Schools and Children Centres. We listened to their core concerns about the challenges you all face daily to support families in need, against a backdrop of diminishing resources and continuing financial constraints. Above all, we heard that supporting the health and wellbeing of children, their families and staff, were of priority concern and we have responded to this in our final product. This offer will be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure its relevance and accuracy, the next review being due by 31 March 2018.

The Early Help and Prevention Service would like to thank all of you who have been involved to support this work and we look forward to the next opportunity to involve you in an ever growing borough wide Early Help partnership system, supporting families to build resilience in the face of challenges and lead safer lives without the need for involvement of services.

Access Prevention Through Partnership here (external link)

The Early Help and Prevention Service will be delivering a new parenting programme from April.

The Triple P group is for parents of children up to 12 years old. It will take place at Belmont Junior School in Rusper Road, Wood Green, London N22 6RA. Starting on Tuesday 25 April 2017, the morning course will run for 9 weeks.

This programme is currently for parents who have children with needs at Tier 1 or Tier 2. Please contact Carol Ricketts-Sampaio on  Carol.Ricketts-Sampaio@haringey.gov.uk  telephone 020 8489 4663 or Beena Gadher  on 020 8888 8261 if you would like to discuss a possible place or you need any further advice or information about parenting programmes or other types of parenting interventions.

Please submit your application as soon as possible as it takes time to contact referrers and to screen applications. Places are allocated primarily on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

Please return the application form (attached) to: parenting.programmes@haringey.gov.uk

Triple P final

Parenting programme application form

The evidence of the impact of collaborative working between schools and the Early Help service in Haringey is emerging.

Latest figures show a success rate of 98.8%  where children and young people are stepped down from Children’s Social Care through Early Help. Currently, where Early Help is supporting families, the re-referral rate back into Social Care reduces to just 1.2% compared to 19% (YTD)  for cases closed without being supported by Early Help services.

Early Help is supporting families with children at all Haringey secondary schools and 93% of primary schools in the borough – an increase from 63% since January 2016.

‘Conversations 4 Change’ (C4C) is a significantly different approach to Early help which launches in October which will provide a faster response to families to maximise engagement and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. C4C relies on meaningful conversations alongside prompt, practical support.  This new methodology has been developed in response to feedback from families and partners about the time it can take for families to meet with their family support worker.

C4C moves Early Help practice away from an assessment model to a dynamic dialogue with families and partners, utilising the team around the family model to develop change-focused goals with the family and using the relationships to help sustained change to be achieved. This simplified approach will also enable and encourage practitioners in universal settings to retain the lead for some family cases, where they already have a meaningful and productive relationship, but draw in the additional resource or broader disciplines available within the Early Help Service, to help move families forward.

The Early Help service has been in place for almost a year and has supported hundreds of families to better outcomes. Our transformation over the last year has been a remarkable journey and we are listening and responding to feedback we are receiving from families and partners to now refine our systems to ensure we are delivering an Early Help service in partnership, that meets the needs of our community. We have developed this new approach to ensure families are supported more quickly. 

‘Conversations for Change’ is a significantly different approach which will provide a faster response to families and  which relies on meaningful conversations alongside prompt, practical support. It is much less about processes and a formulaic approach to working with families. This new methodology has been developed in response to feedback from families and partners about the time it can take to meet with their family support worker.

Conversations for Change moves Early Help practice away from an assessment model to a dynamic dialogue with families and partners, utilising the team around the family model to develop change-focused goals with the family and using the relationships to help sustained change to be achieved. This simplified approach will also enable and encourage practitioners in universal settings to retain the lead for some family cases, where they already have a meaningful and productive relationship, but draw in the additional resource or broader disciplines available within the Early Help Service, to help move families forward.