Early Help for Shropshire Children & Families Children’s Trust Area Forum

VISION Provide parents with information, guidance and support to help them parent their children consistently giving them a safe, happy and valued life experience. Promote positive family life - making every member of the family feel valued, safe, trusted and happy. Promote family engagement in the community to build a supportive, resilient and safe community.

EARLY HELP STRATEGY To provide early help to reduce family breakdown and the need for specialist social work intervention. To ensure that early help is accessible and coordinated to families Systems and Process have minimum bureaucracy Early Help is not always short term or task centred Ensure children are protected from significant harm and our service provision is not process driven

KEY BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS Develop a family approach with targeted early help – one worker one family. Increase the social work offer to build confidence and support of lead professionals in identifying and managing risk. Locality delivery to promote a needs led early help provision and community engagement – mentors and volunteers. Develop performance measures that are: –Outcome focused for the individual child and family member –Impact measures for services to inform best value and commissioning.

Call For information and guidance (including support with the Early Help process and how to access Early Help tools, resources and training) To find out if anyone has recorded that they have completed an assessment & provided Early Help to a child/ young person and their family To seek consultation (at an Early Help level) with an Early Help Worker or Primary Mental Health Worker

GP Service user Professional (Universal) Early Help Star and Plan – Review - Close Assessment by universal / professional who is already known by the family Assessment by a targeted agency NFA / signpost

Early Help Social Work ‘it is important that those working with children, young people and adults have ready access to social work expertise to discuss concerns and decide whether a referral to children’s social care is needed’. Munroe Report May 2011

What will the offer look like Will enable, support and guide Enable professionals to be confident in their work with families Provide agency colleagues with up to date safeguarding knowledge and tool kits Not case holding Not necessarily Lead Professional These social workers will still offer the already established well used telephone consultation through COMPASS, in addition to working closely with our colleagues out in the community

Targeted Youth Support For young people (11-19) and their families Helping children have a safe, happy and healthy family life

Child Sexual Exploitation Domestic Abuse Emotional resilience Homelessness Prevention Transition ASD/MLD Young People Advocacy and Mediation Substance Misuse Risk taking behaviours

Sure Start Children’s Centres Delivery of Children’s Centres is a statutory duty of the local authority to improve outcomes for families and children from conception to age 5 years Children’s Centres are intended to be a ‘one stop shop’ for children under five and their families Core purpose includes: parenting support, child development and school readiness, child and family health and life chances All the different organisations that offer these services through a children’s centre need to work together to give the best support possible to all children and families. These early childhood services are collectively known as Sure Start Children’s Centres Children’s Centre groups, activities and support are all free to access Children’s Centres cover a broad remit of universal and targeted services within the community Early childhood services are subject to Ofsted inspection

For further information please contact: North Shropshire Children’s Centres: (Oswestry) Central Shropshire Children’s Centres: (Shrewsbury) South Shropshire Children’s Centres: (Church Stretton) or visit our display and have a chat