Early Help

Early Help Contacts, Training and Resources

Key contacts

If you need support or assistance in offering Early Help to families please visit our Early Help Contact List

Early Help Localities

Localities hold regular Early Help triage meetings. They can provide support and advice on a range of subjects: how to complete the Early Help assessment, plan and review; using the Right For Children system; signposting professionals and families to local services and supporting the identification of a lead practitioner.

You can contact the Early Help localities via the following email addresses:-

Connecting with the Family Intervention Team (FIT)

If, from discussion with the family you are supporting at Early Help, you agree that extra help with parenting would help them, please see the following information on the service and the Practice Briefing.

We are part of the Devon County Council reshape so there may be some changes in the near future. For now, we can be accessed through the Request for Support form.

We support families who have a Level 3 need – see FIT Criteria Form. The locality teams can provide information, advice, and guidance on the wider parenting support offer.

The FIT team managers’ welcome a discussion with you before you make a request for support if you need.

Change to availability of Parent Plus Adolescent Programme (PPAP)

FIT co-ordinate and deliver the PPAP course in addition to our core work with families. At this time, there is a lack of trained facilitators available to deliver the number of courses we need, to meet the interests of families.

For now we will pause the offer and we will direct families to the free Let’s Talk Teenagers course.

We value the course and the support it provides families. We will be spending this time working on increasing the number of facilitators and plan to be advertising the course as soon as possible.

Training

Right for Children training and support details

Resources, additional services and support

Locality Triage Meetings

Details of Locality Triage Meetings

Download the Early Help – Triage Request form

Download the Early Help Information Sharing Consent Form

This form was designed for printing purposes only, and with that in mind will not be fully accessible to someone using assistive technology such as a screen reader.

The Early Help Information Sharing Consent Form is also available in the languages listed in the table below, please select the language you need, and download a copy to use.

Albanian Pashto Sorani
Amharic Polish Spanish
Arabic Portuguese Turkish
Bengali Punjabi  Ukrainian
Dari Romanian Urdu
Farsi Russian
French Simplified Chinese

Practitioner Forums

Early Help Practitioner Forum dates

Resources from previous forums

To be added following the meetings

Devon Pregnancy Support Pathway Panel Meetings

The Devon Pregnancy Support Pathway Meeting is a multi-agency panel meeting provides a robust oversight and support network for pregnancies where additional support is needed to help families and new-born babies.

All professionals in contact with pregnant mothers should routinely assess the needs of the mother and unborn baby, gathering as much information as possible and make timely referrals to ensure the right support is offered and identify when a pre-birth assessment is required. The Devon Safeguarding Children Partnership (Devon SCP) has adopted a multi-agency model to help professionals assess safeguarding needs for children and young people. https://www.dcfp.org.uk/training-and-resources/levels-of-need/lon-framework/

The following referral routes should be followed to ensure pregnant mothers receive the right support, by the right services at the right time.

Northern Devon: Earlyhelpnorthsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

Southern Devon: Earlyhelpsouthsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

Mid and East Devon: Earlyhelpmideastsecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

Exeter: Earlyhelpexetersecure-mailbox@devon.gov.uk

PLEASE NOTE: Any requests that come through the front door requesting  the Family Intervention Team (FIT), and are either, accepted for FIT or outcome to external level 3 support or universal /level 2, the front door will also be sent to the EH locality mailboxes so the family can be added to the relevant locality pregnancy support pathway meeting.

Consent should be sought, and referrers should ensure that they have discussed the referral with parent/s and seek consent unless there are concerns that would place the unborn child at risk.

Family Group Conference

To explore family networks, restorative practice, and family group conference please refer to the Family Network Handbook

Autism and Trauma support and guidance

Rainbow coloured infinity logo to represent autismClick here to go to this Sway  The aim of this document is to offer a quick guide to some of the help and guidance available for practitioners to support and signpost families and to raise awareness of autism and trauma

ICON programme

Select this link for the ICON programme which aims to help prevent abusive head trauma by offering support to parents to help them cope with a crying baby.

CORC Outcome and Experience Measures

Select this link for the CORC Outcome and Experience Measures

Quality Assurance

There are 3 main ways to capture Quality Assurance (QA) as identified by the Devon SCP QA Sub-Group. These are: performance information; audit; and family feedback. It is important to identify how this learning is cascaded.
Measuring the Practice
Audit activity is required in order to understand what practice looks like on the ground and how it is managed.

The auditing process is under review in order to meet the new supporting families 10 headline themes.

 

If you think that the child is at risk of significant harm, contact our Front Door directly by calling 0345 155 1071. In an emergency call 999.


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