Agenda item

To receive a high-level presentation on the Early Help Strategy.

This agenda item provided a presentation on the introduction to the Early Help Strategy. The Chair welcomed to the meeting Kelly White, Interim Assistant Director for Early Help and Business Support who was also the LINK Officer for the Commission, and Kirsty Woodhead, Locality Manager. The Chair invited Kelly to lead on the presentation, during which the following was noted:

 

The Background:

·       The Early Help Strategy 2024-2029 was recently approved at Cabinet.

·       There was a government review called Stable Homes Built on Love which completed in 2023, this was a long-standing piece of work with lots of engagement with individuals who had lived experience in early help. This review defined a significant change to children’s social care and set out key ambitions, known as the six pillars of reform. One of the pillars focused on including the need to provide family help, to help ensure all children and families could get the right help at the right time and in an easy way.

·       Working Together to Safeguard Children was statutory guidance, which was refreshed in 2023, which alongside the Childrens Act. The guidance stated what organisations and agencies should do to help, protect, and promote the welfare of all children and young people. Ensuring a child-centred approach, while bringing a whole-family focus, to embed a strong, effective, and consistent multi-agency child protection practice.

·       The Early Help System Guide outlined a national vision and descriptors that were shared by the Department of Education and the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities. It also provided a toolkit to assist local strategic partnerships. 

·       The National Supporting Families Framework 2012 focused on sustaining improved outcomes for families, facing complex challenges and problems. The programme promoted a whole family approach. 

 

The Vision and Key Principles:

·       The Early Help Team worked with key partners to develop the key principles, ensuring children and families were kept at the centre of the principles. All agencies worked together to ensure that children, young people, and families could have their needs identified early and could receive swift access to targeted help and support.  

·       The Key Principles developed were as follows:

?   Children, young people and families were at the heart of everything in the service.

?   Early Help was a shared responsibility and was everyone’s business.

?   Children, young people and families would receive the right support, at the right time, in the right place, from the right person.

?   There service was committed to promoting fairness, respect, equality, dignity and supporting autonomy.

?   The service would have purposeful conversations and provide support to improve outcomes.

?   The service would work restoratively with children, young people and families. 

?   Prevention and early help support was better than late intervention. 

?   Public, voluntary and community sector organisations combined to create the early help system and worked together to meet the needs of children and their families.  

?   Expectations of family help to ensure early help would provide the right support at the right time, so that children could thrive with their families.

 

Early Help:

·       Early help was working together to safeguard children, support would be for children of all ages that could improve a family’s resilience and outcomes or reduce the chance of a problem getting worse. It was not an individual service or a council only service, but a system of support delivered by local authorities and their partners working together and taking collective responsibility to provide the right provision in their area.

·       The early help system included several public and voluntary and community sector organisations, working consistently together to meet the needs of children and their families so that they receive the right support at the right time. These organisations included public health nursing, midwifery, mental health services, the police, schools, nurseries, substance misuse providers, educational psychologists, domestic abuse services, childminders, housing providers.

·       Early help focuses on the providing the following:

?   The right support at the right time

?   Identification of needs early, as problems arise to help prevent them from getting worst.

?   The best possible start which could increase the number of children accessing early education.

?   A whole family approach, a system of support that supported families and partnership working.

 

The Three Stages of Support for Children and Young People in Rotherham:

·       Stage One was universal and community family help. Universal and community services were available to all children, young people, and families in Rotherham. These services were provided by different agencies such as nurseries, schools, and colleges, GPs, midwives, health visitors, children centres, family hubs, libraries, youth services, and community organisations. They were the central point for any family in Rotherham requiring information, advice, and support.

·       Examples of support within this stage were as follows:

?   Increase access to all family hubs children’s centres for families in Rotherham.

?   Develop the self-service and digital offer to increase the uptake of evidence-based programmes.

?   The SEND Hub.

?   Provide baby packs.

?   Increase the capacity of the voluntary and community sector through provision of the universal youth work offer across the borough, ensuring young people have places to go and things to do. 

?   Deliver the children’s centre offer to children and families aged 0-5 years, to increase engagement via a universal offer.

?   Deliver targeted work with Rotherham’s not in education, training or employment and not known young people, to support young people in years twelve and thirteen, to access employment, education, and training.

?   Increase and review the use of the Early Help Assessment as Rotherham’s consistent tool to ensure effective and co-ordinated support is provided to children and families.

·       Stage 2 was focused family help that would be provided when families were not managing to affect positive change and required enhanced, more intensive and/or specialist support. Children and their families who needed additional support from the Local Authority so they could meet their full potential, would receive focussed family help. This often included children who required low level statutory social work input. This could be longer term and specialised support, for example supporting a child with disabilities or a child with areas of significant need.

·       Examples of support within this stage were as follows:

?   Supporting families at the earliest opportunity to reduce the need for social care intervention and ensure that children and young people were in education.

?   Working with partners to ensure that children and young people and their families would get the right support at the right time.

?   When there was a need for support, to ensure it was as straightforward as possible to access.

?   Develop the approach to ensure that all children and young people could get the best possible start, by working with families to increase the number of children accessing early education.

?   Ensure that across the wider early help system, attendance was viewed as ‘everybody’s business’ and that the reasons for poor attendance were understood and addressed through the Early Help Assessment.

?   Work with young people that were disengaged to reconnect them to training, further education and employment. 

?   Working to provide better access to mental health and wellbeing support programmes for young people.

?   Working with schools to reduce the number of children who would be excluded.

·       Stage three was specialist family help, this was a statutory service to children and their families, which was provided when children and young people were experiencing or likely to suffer significant harm, including Child Protection and Children in Care arrangements.  Specialist Family Help was provided to families where the problems were severe and had not improved through enhanced or specialist support.

·       Examples of support within this stage were as follows:

?   Child protection

?   Tier three and four mental health services

?   Youth justice support

?   Children in care

?   Children in specialist education placements.

 

The Strategies Five Year Phased Delivery Plan:

·       Phase One would be Design 2024-2025 and would include the following:

?   Identifying and consulting with stakeholders such as the police, health, and wider local authority.

?   Considering the new Working Together to Safeguard Children Framework 2023, incorporating any required changes for Rotherham.

?   Developing a roadmap of a child’s journey across the Early Help System.

?   Reviewing and updating the Early Help Systems Guide in July 2024.

?   Budget and HR integration for relevant agencies.

?   Establishing a project.

·       Phase Two would be to implement and deliver 2025-2026 and would include the following:

?   Ensuring clear governance arrangements.

?   Focusing on operational groups.

?   Developing key outcome measures.

?   Implementing the re-designed system.

?   HR support.

?   Budget monitoring.

?   Continuing engagement with employees and stakeholders.

·       Phase Three would be maintain and operate 2026-2028 and would include the following:

?   The on-going delivery of services.

?   Implementing the government changes and legislation.

?   Monitoring service quality and adjust measures accordingly.

?   Responding to learning to ensure continuous improvement.

?   Budget pressures.

?   External evaluation.

·       Phase five which would be to evaluate in 2029 and would include the following:

?   Assess and identify areas of development.

?   Review and refresh the Strategy.

 

The Chair thanked the relevant officers for the presentation and invited questions, this led to the following points being raised during discussions:

•       The term absolute low income was referenced in the report, previously this was referenced as absolute poverty, the change in terminology was due to absolute low income being the government terminology used.

•       Child and Adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) would be included in the third stage of the Early Help Strategies five-year phased delivery plan. There was also lower-level intervention provided to children and young people within the early help offer, if there were concerns raised relating to emotional and mental wellbeing prior to a referral into the CAHMS process.

•       Electively home education children were not specifically named within the Strategy, there was a lot of work that was undertaken via the Education Service. Early help works closely with the Education Team to identify any early help required for all children, including those that were electively home educated.

•       The Early Years 0-5 Service engaged families within the borough in relation to early years and accessing services. There was a high uptake in nursey and pre-school offers.

•       Early Help Assessments were completed by Early Help Workers within individual schools. Schools were well placed to use the Early Help Assessment as a tool and mechanism to ensure children and families accessed the right support. Within the Early Help Service there were five Integrated Working Leads who provided support and oversight to the process of Early Help Assessments and worked closely with all partners, including schools.

•       There was a digital pathway within the Family Hubs Programme, this focused on providing support to access digital offers within the family hubs centres and libraries. There was direct work and engagement available for any families unable to access the digital offer.  The Digital Inclusion Team worked within the family hubs centres to support families and individuals who did not have digital access. The Early Help Service held evening groups for daytime workers, to ensure that they could access support. The community resources via the voluntary sector also held some evening-based services. The Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) was available twenty-four hours a day, via an out of hours service. The digital offer provided was a wraparound offer for families who were unable to work with the service in person, the main emphasis of the offer was to work with families face to face, in their homes and local communities. The service recognised the need for a digital offer to compliment the face to face offer.

•       Child Development Centres were available for children aged between 0-5 and once a child turned five years old, they would be placed on the CAMHS waiting list. There was a waiting list for CAMHS, an intermediary service provided support via outreach to mainstream schools, which linked in with early help and wider services. Children of school age had access to a wide variety of school support.

•       In relation to the baby self-weighing sessions, it was advised that some parents were unable to attend due to the time of the sessions. It was acknowledged that it was difficult to find a suitable time for all, however, the service would be flexible to the needs of the residents to ensure families could attend a session.

•       Early Help had strong links with the voluntary sector, such as Voluntary Action Rotherham. The service worked closely with the Digital Inclusion Team who supported families to provide sim cards and other digital access where required.

 

 

Resolved:

1)    That the presentation on the introduction to Early Help be noted.

2)    That the Assistant Director for Early Help provides members with specific data in relation to the number of schools with a dedicated family support worker available.