Guidance
Early Help means identifying needs within families early and providing preventative support and intervention before they become difficult to address.
Early Help can be provided at any time in a child's or young person's life, pre-birth to adulthood.
Support can be delivered from a wide range of services depending on what is needed; people already working with your family might offer additional help or support so that you can access more specialist or targeted services.
All agencies in Bury who have contact with children and their families can provide help and support; for us to help a Story So Far document would be completed, this is a tool which agencies use to record conversations to help us understand what support you need and enables us to put a plan together to support you.
The Early Help Locality delivery model has been developed through our multiagency Childrens Partnership and came into effect on Monday 7 October 2019.
- The Early Help Locality teams support all 5 neighbourhoods across the borough and are physically based in the Children Centres in Bury, Radcliffe and Whitefield.
- The teams are working with children and young people, age 0-19, and their families (25 years if SEND)
- The teams are linked to the schools, so that every school in the borough has a named Early Help Social Worker
- The Early Help Locality teams link with partner organisations to ensure a joined-up approach
- The Early Help Assessment is called the Story So Far, this replaces the previous Early Help Family Support Plan and is already being successfully used by schools and other agencies
Where additional support is required the Early Help Practitioners from the Locality Teams will work with a family to understand their needs and create a plan of support to promote positive change. Support ranges from mental health, education concerns, Parenting conflict, healthy relationships and much more.