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.