What is Early Help?

Early help services can be delivered to parents, children or whole families, but their main focus is to improve outcomes for children. Services may help parents who are living in challenging circumstances provide a safe and loving environment for their child.

Providing timely support is vital. Addressing a child or family's needs early on can reduce risk factors and increase protective factors in a child's life (Early Intervention Foundation (EIF), 2021).

Protective factors can reduce risk to a child's wellbeing. They include:

• developing strong social and emotional skills

• having a strong social support network for the family – including support

• for good parental mental health

• income support, benefits and advice

• good community services and facilities

(EIF, 2021; Cleaver, Unell and Aldgate, 2011).

It is more effective to provide early help when problems first arise than to intervene later (DfE, 2018; EIF, 2021).

We offer support in school to help parents and carers who are struggling with issues such as debt, parenting, substance misuse, mental health issues, poor housing and domestic abuse.

We do this through:

• offering advice directly from our Family Support Worker
• connecting you with agencies that offer support such as foodbanks, debt management and counselling following domestic abuse
• signposting you to organisations that may be able to help such as Relate, Building Sound Minds and IAPT Talking Therapies

William Rhodes Primary & Nursery Early Help Service aims to:

• Identify children and their families who would benefit from Early Help Services by using Derby and Derbyshire thresholds.
• Undertake an assessment of the need for Early Help using the Derby and Derbyshire approved Early Help Assessment guidance.
• Provide targeted Early Help Services to address the assessed needs of a child and their family which focuses on activity to improve the outcomes for the child using the Team Around the Family framework. 
• Share Early Help Service information proactively and effectively meeting the need to promote the welfare and protect the safety of children in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act (2018) principles.

All teaching and support staff are expected to deliver a strong foundation of support on which our Early Help Service is delivered and includes:

• building positive and informed relationships with children and their parents & carers
• providing well planned and accessible lessons  
• ensuring quality first teaching at all times
• engaging in collaborative ways of working with children and their families. 

The Strategic Early Help Team