Early Help? ‘Early help is intervening early and as soon as possible to tackle problems emerging for children, young people and their families or with a population most at risk of developing problems. Effective intervention may occur at any point in a child or young person’s life’

What Early Help will do… Early Help means identifying needs within families early, and providing preventative support and intervention before problems become complex and entrenched. Early Help means offering support to very young children such as early in life, or early after the emergence of particular need. It includes both universal interventions and targeted interventions to prevent needs from escalating. Early Help allows for support to be put in place at the right time to meet family’s needs prior to issues reaching crisis point. It draws upon families own skills and promotes self- reliance behaviours. We aim to reduce the demands upon specialist and higher tier services.

Journey so far Launch of the Early Help Strategy in July 2015 Launch of the new Levels of Need and Response Framework in July 2015 Testing and pilot of new Early Help Assessment (EHA) Increasing the number of key workers and delivering Troubled Families requirements Design and development of the Early Help Hubs

Delivering effective early help Collective responsibility Earlier and effective support Integrated and coordinated approach Measuring success

The Early Help Hubs NorthAbraham Moss Centre CentralAlex House South Chorlton District Office and Bowland Road (Etrop Court from May 2016) Go live date 28/09/15

Key functions of the hubs Advice, guidance, triage, support for partners to develop EHAs, requests for targeted and specialist services, allocations, drop ins, problem solving for a Delivery of targeted and specialist interventions at level 3 and 4 on the Levels of Need Framework Development of a Performance Framework with quality assurance and outcomes evaluation processes Community capacity building and commissioning developments

Access to the hubs Via professionals telephone help line North Central South Via Early Help Inbox Registering an EHA

EH Assessment & Conversation Tools - New way of working MCAF Audit and The Children and Families Ofsted Inspection and consultation with parents told us that the current assessment (MCAF) did not; Promote engagement with residents Value strengths or recognise readiness for change Assessments were not: Person centred or whole family focused Did not reflect the person’s own voice/ view Encouraged agencies to “fix” problems, and “do to” rather than “do with” Focused on a need, without a clear way to respond Assessment processes influenced a significant amount of demand being presented as high level need, owing to late response to issues that could have been resolved earlier.

Co-designing the Approach with Partners Early Help Principles Agreed: Early Identification of Need through a new need and response framework. Support to children and young people and their families as early as possible. An asset/ strengths based approach - draws upon person’s /families own skills and promotes self-reliance behaviours. A focus on Self Help – promote independence, connect people, create access to a local offer. Holistic approach to assessment – all aspects of life

Need and Response Framework

What parents told us they wanted... To be listened to Be understood Do not want to repeat information Want to be recognised for what they do well Do not want to feel judged Want to trust the practitioner will do what they say they will when they will. In order to change resident’s behaviour it was recognised we needed to influence a new way of working for MCC and it’s partners.

EH Assessment Asset Based and Holistic for child, young person, family, and adult How ready and able are you to make changes and get help? How will this affect yourself and others close to you? What changes can you make (and be helped to make) to get things going well again ? What might help to make things better? What’s working well? Home life Work life College life Health and wellbeing Social community life What could be better? What is important to you? What is important for you? Around 5 Aspects of life: What does a good life look like to you in 3 months, 1 Yr, 5 yrs? What’s working well?

Guiding Principles for the EH conversation The steps to change The whole person The person’s / family situation GOOD QUALITY CONVERSATIONS LEADING TO GOOD QUALITY EH ASSESMENTS 1)See the whole person first by; Understanding what is important to them. 2) See the whole family situation second by: The five aspects what is working well and could be better 3)See the steps to change by; Understanding what is important to and for the person and family what the person is ready and able to do, who will the changes affect and what outcomes will be seen

The New Approach to Early Help Assessment The “What’s Working Well?” Wheel and the new EHA form is based on behaviour change theory; nudging positive behaviour, by using choice architecture and language Both were codesigned with partners and tested over the summer. It is a shared tool for use by the practitioner and family Language is family friendly, and conversational style Reframes the context from ‘what’s wrong to what’s strong’? Primes people for change by assessing readiness to change, using stages of change theory (knowing to doing) Helps to understand the whole person in their family environment by taking a holistic approach around all aspects of life Includes self assessment and practitioner assessment scores Promotes self-help, access to the local offer and personal responsibility

The EH Tools What’s working well?’ wheel -a conversation enabler tool. Enabling a conversation about difficult issues whilst focusing on strengths in the 5 aspects of life, whole person/ whole family EH cue cards- prompts to guide the conversation to cover all aspects of life The EHA form- A Strengths based approach to assessment

What’s working well? Wheel?

Early Help Assessment

The EH Tools Trust Your Instinct- A guide to help the wider workforce know what to see, say and do when things are not going well for someone. Help and Support Manchester- Local offer of services, information advice and guidance. Practitioners guidance to EH-a online handbook on manchester.gov.uk/helpandsupportmanchester

Trust Your Instinct Guide

manchester.gov.uk/helpandsupportmanchester

What will good like? More EHAs All aspects of life not just single view Voice of the child/ yp/ family Evidence of the Local offer and local partnerships being used effectively Scoring that reflects a practitioner and person’s view Fewer high level, late interventions, more early help

Workforce Development Three strands; – Induction to integrated working- the EH hub model – Strength based assessment – Managing in the EH hub Training - Each agency should ID a EH Champion to support a "Train the Trainer model". Further engagement training coming soon. Additional sessions for schools in early Oct. First round training 200 practitioners Funding proposals for wider roll out