What is Early Help?
Early Help is the route for children, young people and families to receive a low-level of targeted support at the earliest possible stage of need, before issues escalate into problems that need more serious interventions. Early Help is a tool for prevention, giving parents and carers the support to stay in control of their family’s needs.
Successful Early Help involves shared working between practitioners in children’s services and partners in health, education and the voluntary and community sector, too.
This can include support with health, wellbeing and behaviour, attendance at school, concerns about bullying or substance misuse among many other things.
Parents and carers can refer themselves to Early Help for advice and support, and children and young people can get in touch themselves as well. Friends, family, neighbours, educators, anybody with concerns can call the Early Help Front Door on 0345 678 9021 and speak to a specially trained advisor who will ask, without judgement, "how can we help?".
What is the Early Help transformation programme?
The Early Help transformation programme is Shropshire Council’s investment in prevention for children’s services.
We know that the best outcomes for children and young people happen when their families have been supported at an early stage, not when unchecked issues turn into crisis.
We know that investment at this stage helps us to manage demand for more costly and disruptive services, like residential care, when problems have become too big for families to handle themselves.
We know that investing in our young people today will lay the foundations for healthy and ambitious futures tomorrow.
Our hard-working social care staff know all this as well and are ready for us to collaborate with our partners to get upstream of the issues that they see in the families they work with.
The Early Help transformation programme is our plan to make this happen and transform the lives of Shropshire’s children and young people forever.
Who is leading the Early Help transformation programme?
Ffion Watson – Project Manager
I have several years’ experience working in Adult’s & Children’s Social Care, and Housing including service operations, project delivery, programme support and leadership to a number of transformational changes and initiatives across the council.
I am thrilled to be part of the large-scale transformation of our Early Help services and I’m passionate about developing and implementing impactful services to support children and families in Shropshire to live their best life.
Sam Wenlock – overseeing Early Help Partnership, Partnership Board and SEND
“During my 9 years in children's services, I have developed a deep understanding of the importance of effective partnerships. My work in education has ignited a strong passion for supporting children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and engaging in early preventive work through Early Help. As a SENCO, I have had the privilege of planning interventions and support strategies to help students with SEND reach their full potential. Early intervention is a key belief of mine, and I focus on establishing strong partnerships with schools, families, and community organisations to create a comprehensive support network. I am excited about joining forces with colleagues and partners to shape Early help services in Shropshire.”
Charlie Lucas – overseeing Supporting Families including data and performance
“Like all the practitioners in the Early Help team, I came into children’s services 13 years ago because I wanted to make a difference. I have faced the same barriers and challenges that lots of my colleagues have, too, and I know that need for change is critical. I am looking forward to working together and creating a new way of working so that we really can make the difference that we set out to make at the beginning.”
Annie Mackellar – overseeing the youth strategy, 0-5 and family hubs
“My experience in children’s services has been focused, in recent years, on support for 0-5's and I am passionate about prevention. I really believe that the first 1001 days of a child’s life are vital to healthy development and that this is where children’s services can have a lifelong impact. I am looking forward to coming together with colleagues and partners to shape the future of children’s services in Shropshire.”
Julie Duncan – Workforce Transformation Lead
“I have always been committed to working with colleagues and partners to enhance their confidence to support families to give their children the best start in life they can – irrespective of any challenges the families may face, where they live, go to school etc. I am excited by the opportunity to help shape the way we work with families across the whole early help system. If we can all work together to develop new ways of working, we can offer families holistic support to achieve this.”
Siobhan Hughes – Service Manager and Service Lead
“This is the 4th time that I have been involved in an Early help Transformation Programme, and it is by far the most ambitious and collaborative. The impact of Getting Leadership Right has been seen in the relationships we have developed across the council to help support transformation, recognising our shared vision, goals and interdependencies, and thinking creatively on how we can create outcomes for families. We have excellent examples of this with Public Health and Education and we continue to develop more.
The relationship between the Office of the Chief Executive and the service is essential in ensuring that we run an effective and timely transformation programme, the impact of which is being seen in the progress we have made. This new approach has been recognised by our partners, helping the council to be seen as innovative and leaders in change.
Early Help Transformation – an update so far
Since August, we have:
- Delivered an early engagement workshop with Early Help staff, sharing and listening to ideas and experiences from our colleagues
- Delivered a workshop with partners, including a face-to-face session and online Teams session. These were brilliantly attended, with around 80 partners across Shropshire taking part, and we will be providing another one, due to popular demand
- Developed and implemented one front door for children’s services, situating the Early Help and Support team alongside COMPASS
- We have developed the ‘how can I help approach’, to support families receiving the right help at the right time
- Launched the new Early Help Front Door help desk (E-HAST), promoting a ‘how can we help’ approach at the earliest stage of need for children, young people and families
- Refreshed the partnership board, making sure that all our current partners are represented and can share their expertise
- Introduced ‘quick wins’ to ensure that practice improves within the early help service.
- Developed a manager’s performance dashboard
- Introduced the new Data Governance Board to help improve our access to and quality of data.
- At the moment, we are listening to parents/carers/children and young people who are already engaged with Early Help to find out their thoughts and experiences
- We are listening to colleagues and partners and have had some helpful feedback on our new practice standards, these are being revised with your suggestions in mind.
- We have reached the highest amount of Strengthening Families’ Claims EVER, this quarter with a total of 95 successful claims! What a great achievement, well done everyone!
Up next, we will be:
- Delivering another workshop to engage those partners who haven’t already been represented
- Carrying out focus groups with children in primary schools and nurseries
- The Youth Support team and voluntary and community sector will be supporting us with participation and consultation with young people
- Planning a presence in Early Help hubs across the county, to support collaboration and communication with our teams
- Feedback from all participation sessions will be brought together and used to inform a draft Early Help strategy, the roadmap to help us to get where we need to be by April 2024
Thank you so much to all our colleagues who have helped us to get the Early Help Transformation Programme off to a flying start. Everybody’s input so far has been invaluable, and we will continue to call on you for ideas and suggestions all the way through.
We will be holding some staff advisory groups very soon for front line workers and managers, these will be held monthly and will be an opportunity to share your feedback on changes and transformation. Please get in touch with charlotte.lucas@shropshire.gov.uk to register your interest.