One minute guide: Early help

What is early help

Early Help should start early in the life of the problem so that statutory interventions (such as the involvement of social work services) can be avoided where appropriate. Intervening as early as possible, regardless of the age of the child or young person, can positively improve their outcomes. Early help is voluntary and consent from children, young people and their families to work with them should always be sought.

In Leeds, we believe Early Help should always be an approach to provide children, young people and families with the right support at the right time to thrive and reach their full potential. Parents and carers know their children best, and we support them when presented with challenges to build on their capacity and resources and be empowered to deal with the issues they face.

Early help is everyone’s business! It encompasses a range of services from universal services such as your GP and school to more targeted services such as children’s centres (the Early Start service in Leeds), youth services and your local cluster. When more help is needed you can access the Family Hubs.

Thrive model

This is a graduated approach model we have developed using the thrive model to help explain the early help approach to supporting families. It is important to remember that that Early Help is everybody’s business.

Getting help

Where appropriate a graduated approach to Early Help is taken. This means we anticipate universal or targeted services are able to support families with most of their Early Help needs.

Going from help to more help

Some families will need more support from targeted services. In those cases, services such as schools, Clusters, Youth Services and Children's Centres will provide Early Help support before referring families to more intensive services.

This approach means when families are referred, there is usually a better understanding of their needs, helping to get the right support in place, at the right time.

Getting more help

When family needs escalate or new needs emerge that can't be met by universal or targeted services, they can be referred to the Family Hubs who can help advise or provide additional support.

Family Hubs can help services to continue delivering early help by working with practitioners offering them advice and support or they can provide direct work with the family dependent on their needs.

Getting risk support

Where intensive family support is needed or risk concerns are identified, it may be more appropriate to access support from Multi-systemic Therapy (MST), SAFE Project, Children's Social Work Services or Therapeutic Social Work Teams who can support families where there may be a greater risk to a child, young person or family's wellbeing.

Our Leeds Early Help Strategy is in line with Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023), which also includes proactive and planned support for those children and young people stepping down from statutory social work interventions or specialist care.

You can visit our early help website for further information about early help in Leeds.

Our early help approach

The Leeds early help approach has four key elements:

Right conversations, right people, right time

This means talking to families about what support they need. Sometimes the best person to help is someone families already know, which can happen quickly so they don’t have to wait. Conversations lead to a meaningful assessment and - where appropriate - a plan to support the child or young person and their family.

The 3As

Helping every child and young person to attend, attain and achieve. If children are supported to go to nurseries, schools and colleges, this will help them to do well, have better health and well-being, and be more likely to get a job when they’re grown up. We want children in Leeds to have friends and hobbies and lots of opportunities to play.

Leeds practice framework

This is a model which helps supports restorative practice which is embedded in how we work with children, young people and their families. We act early, before situations or problems become worse. Families can approach anyone working with them who will respond, begin to understand and start conversations with the right people to identify how help should be provided.

How we put early help into practice

It is everybody’s responsibility to identify and review need, through having conversations with children, young people and their families and planning with them to address these needs.

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