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Early Help

Launching January 2025 - Family Help community drop-ins

Our Family Help team are launching a new initiative to better support Bury families. Starting week commencing 20 January we are rolling out community-based Family Drop-ins. The new drop-ins are only in their infancy but we are actively recruiting more partners who will provide community spaces so families can easily access support. As the network grows, we plan on delivering more drop-in sessions across the borough so watch this space. Once we finalise our drop-ins, you’ll be able to download our timetable here.

What help can I get?

We know that every family will experience challenges and difficulties at different times in theirs and their children’s lives, and that this is completely normal! ​

However, we also know that sometimes these problems can start impacting on family life, and at times ‘asking for help’ either seems too daunting, or embarrassing, or you may have no idea where to go, or who to ask for support!​

We want to ensure that every family has access to the right help at the right time in the area that they live. ​

Therefore, our family help team will now be offering weekly drop-in sessions at various locations across the borough, so that parents, carers, grandparents or others! Can come in and speak to one of our trained practitioners who will be able to offer advice, guidance, and support, or sign post you to the right service who can help. ​

We can offer one-to-one advice on a range of topics such as: ​

  • Parenting ​
  • Mental Health ​
  • School or college​
  • Finances ​
  • Parental conflict ​
  • Friendships ​
  • Sexual health ​
  • Domestic abuse ​
  • Family relationships & difficulties ​
  • Substance misuse ​
  • Housing ​
  • General worries or queries ​

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.

Contact details:

Guidance/supporting documents