Meeting the needs of children and families through Early Help

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This section provides advice, guidance and practical tools to all practitioners around offering inclusive, early help support to children and families within Gloucestershire. The blue tabs on the left hand side of the page will take you to more specific information about various aspects of early help and supporting children, young people and their families.

It is suggested that you read the Early Help Practice Guidance to ensure you are familiar with how Early Help works within Gloucestershire. This document talks about how you as a practitioner can support children and families where they have additional and emerging needs. It has been broken down into sections for you so that it is easy to navigate and find the information you need.

You will also find the tools and templates you need to support children and families within the ‘Using the Graduated Pathway of Early Help and Support’ tab. This includes the My Plan and My Plan + templates as well as information about how to register assessments and plans with the Local Authority to aid information sharing and reduce duplication for families in re-telling their stories.

You can also find links to other teams who are able to provide support to children and families as well as the support that you can access as a practitioner by clicking on the relevant blue tabs including 'Lead Practitioner Support' and 'Working Together to Support children and families'.

It can sometimes be difficult to identify what a child or young person’s needs are especially if there is additional potential harm from other underlying factors for example children suffering from neglect. In Gloucestershire child neglect has been a prominent feature of Serious Case reviews in recent times and as a result a Child Neglect Toolkit has been developed to support the early identification of children and young people at risk of neglect. The toolkit supports practitioners to reflect on the child or young person’s circumstances; identifying strengths and resources to support families whilst also evidencing the practitioner’s concerns. For more information on using the neglect toolkit and where to get support to understand and identify neglect please click HERE.

If you are looking for funding ideas, training and development information or information about policy and legislation you can find them within other sections of the directory by clicking on the words above. There is also a section within the Information for Practitioners area, which has a wealth of direct work tools and resources that you can use to support your work with children and young people. To access this please click HERE.

Overview of Early Help Services

Early Help Overview of ServicesSupporting families enabling them to achieve and sustain significant change through a whole family working approach. Families First Family Support Teams. Based within 7 district teams (including 2 for Gloucester City) - delivering the Family Intervention Model, with elements of systemic practice, restorative practice and trauma informed practice and the Graduated Pathway My Plan/+, to stabilise and support families at the earliest opportunity. Children and Family Centres.16 Centres delivering family support service for children pre-birth to 11 yrs. and their families. Early Help Co-ordinators. Providing support, advice and guidance to schools and partners to develop and deliver robust Early Help plans and a comprehensive knowledge of available services and community resources. Family Group Conference. A county-wide Family Group Conference team taking referrals across the early help and safeguarding spectrum offering Family Group Conferences, Family Network Meetings, Safety and Support Planning meetings, Restorative meetings and Emergency Network Meetings. Direct Programme delivery. Triple P Parenting. Trauma recovery. Boys/girls groups. Digital interventions to reduce parental conflict. Partnership Managers. Engaging key partners and brokering effective locality partnerships to help inform early help and safeguarding responses in response to local needs. Family Information Service. Information and advice for families on a range of subjects (childcare availability and funding, finances, family support, activities, parenting and education including support for children and young people with SEND) – management of the GlosFamilies Directory and Local Offer for children with disabilities. Early Help Triage. Oversight of requests for early help interventions from professionals; MASH and parents/carers, information gathering and make initial decision making in regards to the service offer. Family Group Conference. A county-wide Family Group Conference team taking referrals across the early help and safeguarding spectrum offering Family Group Conferences, Family Network Meetings, Safety and Support Planning meetings, Restorative meetings and Emergency Network Meetings. Community Social Workers. Social work qualified practitioners, providing advice and training (e.g. MARF, Neglect toolkit) to community partners (Designated Safeguarding Leads for example) to respond to emerging risk, manage and de-escalate risk and better respond to complex and challenging cases.

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