Confidential Draft for Discussion with CSEMT

Draft VersionDraft Version632 16051213

Draft for Children’s Trust Board 16th December 2013

Confidential Draft for Discussion with CSEMT

Poole Children’s Services

Early Help Strategy

The right help at the right time

Contents

1DEFINITION OF EARLY HELP

2OUR VISION FOR EARLY HELP

3PURPOSE STATEMENT

34KEY PRINCIPLES

45IDENTIFICATION OF NEED AND ACCESSING HELP

56IMPROVING OUR EARLY HELP OFFER

67QUALITY AND MEASURING SUCCESS

78OWNERSHIP, GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

1. Definition of Early Help

Early help is about identifying problems at an early stage and providing purposeful and effective help as soon as possible to prevent those problems escalating and becoming more complex to resolve. Early help can be offered to children and young people aged 0-19 years and to families and parents.

2. Our Vision for Early Help

Children, Young People, Parents and Families can easily access services that meet their needs at the right time and in the right way to achieve good outcomes and best value for money.

Services will be coherent, integrated , targeted at those in most need and focused on improving outcomes and reducing the need for more specialist high cost services.

3. Purpose Statement

The overall objective of early help is to intervene as early as possible to best meet the needs of children, young people and families and to prevent eescalation of problems and demands on high cost specialist services

4. Key Principles

Principles underpinning our Early Help Strategy:

Our strategy for early help is based on a vision that children, young people and their families in Poole will be supported earlier to realise opportunities to improve their lives. This vision is based on the following principles:

The overall objective of early help is to intervene as early as possible to best meet the needs of children, young people and families and to prevent escalation of problems and demands on high cost specialist services

1. We will support the capacity of our universal services to respond to emerging problems and deal with them without requiring escalation to more targeted services.

1. We will make it easy for families and young people, and the people who work with them,and people working with them to access information, advice and support.

1. We will train and support all our front line staff and managers to identify problems at an early stage through a holistic Earlyholistic Early Help assessment process and to agree with the family or young person a plan to meet their needs.

1. Families, children and young people are central to defining and addressing the problems they face and are key partners in the process.

7.When we work with family or young person we will be clear and transparent about why we are involved (including any concerns), we will manage their expectations and value thevalue the engagement process with them.

1. Where concerns are identified we will pass information through a multi-disciplinary screening process to ensure risks are identified and that the family or young person receiveperson receives the appropriate level of response.

1. Our role is to support families to be self-reliant and to take control of their own outcomes.

1. We will use our understanding of children, young people and familiesfamilies’ experience of what works to design services better.

1. At an early stage we will seek the consent of families and young people to share information to help us meet their needs. We will put in place multi-agency processes so this information can be shared appropriately and safely.

1. All our interventions will be evidence based and our services will demonstrate that they are improving outcomes for children, young people and families and we will put systems in place so we know the effectiveness of our early help interventions across services.

1. We will focus on our early intervention offer to families from conception to childrenage 5age 5years becauseyears because we know this is the best time to make a difference to the child’s outcomes in later life.

1. We recognise that vulnerable young people with complex needs require a co-ordinated and intensive service response from staff skilled in working with young people, their families and other significant people in their lives.

1. We will ensure an integrated approach across the local authority and partner agencies including Health, Police, Housing, Adult Social Care and the Voluntary and Community Sector.

1. We will develop our workforce to be skilled to identify a range of problems early and to intervene using effective delivery models and to understand when to escalate to more specialist services.

1. We will ensure that early help offer does not end when specialist services become involved and that appropriatethat appropriate support is in place as families and young people ‘step down’ from specialist services.

54. IDENTIFICATION OF NEED AND ACCESSING HELP

The Poole Levels of Need

Universal

All children, young people and families will have help from universal services, such as schools and will continue to do so even when they have higher levels of need, working alongside services in the other levels of need.

The service response changes as the level of need of a child, young person or family becomes more complex.

All families and young people can access services through children’s centres, schools, the Quay Advice Centre and other sites where services are based. Information is available through the Family Information Directory on line. All access points used by families and young people will be able to signpost on to other service if required.

Every universal setting,setting will have an identified worker or team with whom they can discuss early help concerns.

All children’s services staff will have access to a CONSULT service from specialist services ( an advice services from substance misuse services, CAMHS and Children’s Social Care) so they can discuss any concerns.

There will be a multi agency screening process for all agency staff to access when they have identified high levels of need or a concern.

Universal Plus

At this level some additional needs have been identified and single agency/ services will be able to respond to help the family or young person with the identified problem.

Ah Early Help holistic assessment can be used if it is helpful but there is not a requirement for one to have taken place.

Partnership Plus

At this level it has been identified that a family or young person is vulnerable and there are usually more than one significant need.

An Early Help assessment will be carried out to identify the range of needs and what might help the family or young person.

A screening process will take place to see if the levels of concern or risk in the family or concerning the youngthe youngperson requireperson require escalation to the next level of statutory help, often involving social care.

Following the Early Help assessment confirming the range of needs there will be an allocated lead professional and a care/support plan so the family or young person are clear what outcomes are being sought and who is doing what to achieve them (including the Family or Young Person).

Statutory/ Specialist Help

At this level the young person or family will require intensive service response to meet complex or very high level need which can include protective services and/or local authority care. At this level there will always be a comprehensive specialist assessment which will add to any Early Help Assessment.

65. Improving our Early Help Offer

Early Help Assessment and pathways for support ( Including lead Professionals)
Where are we starting from?
Use of the CAF is patchy now and new Holistic Family Assessment Tool (FAF) has) has recently been introduced and is not part of a coherent EH system. We are not clear on a multi-agency basis who should carry out assessments and when the assessments can be shared. We have good peer to peer informal sharing of information and co-ordination but need a more coherent system.
Risk and concern is managed through CONSULT with social care there are no multi-agency hub arrangements in place.
The lead professional arrangements are not robust and vary team to team, they are also not clear on a multi-agency basis.
Our current management information systems do not allow easy sharing of information or the ability to track families’track families’ journey through our early help services.
Key actions
Identify Early Help Assessment Tools
Identify which staff should assess and train them to do so.
Clarify Lead professional role and accountability of Lead professional and agency management
Establish QA process for Early Help Assessments
Design multi-agency structure for information hub and triage/screening of concern.
Introduce single assessment process in social care.
Review current management information systems, maximise their functionality and identify solutions to improve information on systems and management and practitioner access.
Early Help offer to families with young children 0-5
Where are we starting from?
Currently reconfiguring children’s centres to provide more targeted services.
Currently developing robust data sharing with health to allow understanding of whole under 5 population in each area and their needs.
Health visiting change programme is still in early stages and there is not clarity on HV role in new early help under 5 services.
Key actions
Complete reconfiguration of children’s centres
Introduce robust data sharing agreed across agencies
Clarify service delivery model with health visiting and midwifery.
Service for families of school age children and young people and their families.
Where are we starting from?
We have a range of services for families and the 5-19 year age group but here is not a coherent service offer.
We struggle to get the appropriate intensive support engaged with complex young people.
Key actions
Design a coherent integrated young people service offer
Design a coherent targeted family intervention service.
Agree service model across partner agencies

67. Quality and measuring success

Quality assurance of outcomes.

We will further develop our quality assurance systems so that;

• We have a full picture of a young person’s or family’s journey through service and the outcomes that are achieved.
• We will understand where there are gaps in service and unmet need and where services are being ineffective.
• We will quality assurance our Early Help assessments and care/support plans to ensure consistency and quality.
• We will seek the views of parents, children and young people to identify what worked for them and what could have been more effective.
• We will evaluate alternative interventions to check their effectiveness and inform service development.
• We will carry out case audits through Early Help to highlight quality issues and areas for improvement.

Key Measures of Success

Reduction in the harm caused to young people through high risk lifestyles, misuse of alcohol and drugs

Reduction in the harm caused to young people through risky sexual behaviour and a reduction in teenage pregnancy

Improved outcomes for vulnerable young people on the edge of care and prevention of inappropriate care episodes

Reduction in the levels of anti-social behaviour amongst young people and an improvement in outcomes for young people at risk of offending

Improved school attendance and a reduction in school exclusions

Reduction in the number of young people not in education, employment or training

Improved outcomes for young people with complex mental health needs

Reduction in the disadvantage and isolation experienced by young carers

Reduction in the rates of homelessness amongst young people

Reduced inequality by mitigating the impact of poverty and welfare reforms, supporting families and young people into work and reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training

Development of indicator set set ege.g.;

Registrations at Children's Centres.

Numbers of EH assessments and range of staff completing.

Reduced n umber of inappropriate referrals to Social Care

87. Ownership, Governance and Accountability

Delivering early help is not a single agency responsibility and requires an approach which is owned by all stakeholders including Health, Police, Probation, Schools/Education, Children's Social Care, Adult Services, Housing, Voluntary and Community Organisations. This principle is underpinned in the Ofsted Framework which is explicit in stating that early help and intervention is a component of effective safeguarding processes and that local strategies should ensure that all agencies are aware of their responsibilities.

Similarly the new inspection framework for Children's Centres judges the effectiveness of integrated early childhood services across all delivery partners. The impact of early education, health, employment, adult learning and social care interventions are all subject to scrutiny and the effectiveness of this matrix of services is the basis of the inspection grading.

Ofsted Requirements

In practice this means that all agencies working with children, young people and their families in Poole will be required to:

• Provide leadership and effective systems to ensure that staff provide support to families as soon as problems emerge to improve outcomes for children and young people
• Develop and agree a local protocol for early help as set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2013
• Promote attainment in all children so that inequalities within the life chances of the population are reduced and children are ready for school, safe, healthy and engaged
• Agree consistency of approach and application of thresholds
• Share information
• Lead integrated service delivery and effective use of resources
• Agree, monitor and evaluate strategic plans which drive forward the integrated work of partners
• Hold each other to account for the actions agreed

Role of the Poole Children’s Trust

Since the effective implementation of the strategy is dependent upon multi-agency commitment, and is integral to the objective of Poole's wider strategic ambitions, its ownership and management will rest with the Children's Trust.

Role of the Bournemouth and Poole LSCB

Further quality assurance and challenge will also be provided via the Poole Children's Safeguarding Board which will continue to scrutinize the local authority and its partners in respect of the thresholds for different types of assessment and services to be commissioned and delivered and to review and monitor the effectiveness and use of early help assessment tools.

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