What is early help?

Early help is the extra support your family can get if you need it. It may be that you want to prevent a problem or change things for your family before the problem becomes more serious.

Early help is not a specific service or team, it’s an approach that brings together people from a range of services and teams who will work together with your whole family to help improve the situation for everyone.

Early help can offer support to families from pre-birth to adolescents with all sorts of issues from parenting, employment and school attendance to emotional wellbeing or anti-social behaviour.

 

Why would I need early help?

When one person in your family has a problem it often affects everyone else too. You may be worrying about someone’s physical or mental health, a disability or special need, being a carer, domestic abuse, alcohol or drug misuse, harmful behaviour or involvement in crime.

 

How does early help work?

By identifying and building on your strengths as a family early help can support families to find long term solutions to issues, as well as developing your skills to help you manage any future challenges.

You will have one main point of contact. This could be someone you already have a good relationship with such as a youth worker or health visitor. They will be known as your lead worker and they will help you access the services you need.

 

What happens next?

Step 1: If you feel your family could benefit from an early help assessment then please contact the college and ask to speak with the early help and family support worker for an initial discussion. If after this initial conversation you would like to proceed with early help you will be placed on our list or our early help and family support worker will signpost you to an alternative agency.

Step 2: When your family has reached the top of the list, the early help and family support worker will meet with you and your family and try to understand the views, needs, strengths and difficulties of everyone as well as how you work together as a family.

Step 3: The lead professional will create create a family plan, your plan of support will say who is going to do what and when, including the things you and your family can do to help yourselves.

Step 4: Your plan will be regularly reviewed to make sure it is working or if anything needs to change. Support will continue until your family feels resilient enough to manage your issues on your own.

 

For more information:

Early help’s customer service centre on 0345 155 1071 open Monday to Friday 8am–8pm and Saturdays 9am–1pm

Early help’s customer service, there are early help hubs in each of the four localities –

Northern Devon:	Earlyhelpnorthsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk
Southern Devon:	Earlyhelpsouthsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk
Mid and East Devon:	Earlyhelpmideastsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk
Exeter:	Earlyhelpexetersecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

Please contact Miss Sophie Summerhayes: ssummerhayes@nacollege.devon.sch.uk

You can visit:

Early Help – Devon Children and Families Partnership (DCFP)