Early Help and Targeted Support

Early Help and Targeted Support services seek to prevent escalation and assist with de-escalation where there has been prior social care involvement.  Key components of the Service include:

Early Help Service

The Early Help Officers support professionals to work effectively at an Early Help level.  Key areas of involvement are:

• Training on how to use the Early Help Single Assessment (EHSA) and how to write quality safeguarding referrals with the MASH
• Day to day advice where the aim is that any Early Help exit from the MASH will be completed by someone from the Early Help team, brokering the appropriate level of support for each child/children. Advice is also available on possible referral routes to Early Help or specialist services (such as Single Point of Entry) pre-EHSA, advice on use of pre-EHSA action plan, how to manage situations arising through the EHSA episode and when to close episodes. Early Help Officers will broker support for parents / child where there is not currently a practitioner linked to the family to do this.

MASH 

The Early Help team members in the MASH also operate an advice line about complex and challenging cases in real time. This supports practitioners managing high level cases to develop confidence, reduce anxiety and increase the safety of the process.  It also ensures that front line practitioners do not feel alone and unsupported

Network Event

The team run practitioner network events and cluster events in specific districts to reduce issues of professional isolation and insular working. This allows practitioners to network with one another, share experiences and good practice.  As a broker of services at these meetings, we can ensure that knowledge about services is cascaded down to front line workers.

Early Help Clinics

Early Help Clinics support lead professionals holding cases to enable all the lead professionals or/and Early Help Single Assessment trained personnel to get together in one meeting and discuss cases of note. 

Early Help Single Assessment Oversight

Each Early Help Single Assessment is assigned to an Early Help Officer who will monitor the process of the episode, ensure action plans are acceptable and focus on outcomes for the child/children.  They ensure that episodes do not drift and if they are not effective, discuss options with the lead professionals.  They review records of the meetings and will broker additional services if required and available.  

Family Support Meetings

The team attend Family Support Meetings (FSM) to support, focus and model good practice to practitioners; increasing critical conversation skills and the ability to challenge other practitioners and to support practitioners to deal with challenging people. The current commitment is that Early Help Officers will attend initial Family Support Meetings to ensure a robust action plan is in place and all possible support accessed.  They will then only attend if the situation warrants it, with a particular focus on preventing escalation through the tiers (education, mental health, safeguarding).  Again attendance at these meetings prevents drift.