Early Help
Working with you and your family
At Slyne-with-Hest St Luke’s C of E Primary School we recognise the challenges that families may face in bringing up children. Family life can be complicated and sometimes you need support. If you have a problem at home, please get in touch – we can support you in lots of ways.
What is early help?
Early help means providing support to our children and families as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life. It is support that improves a family’s resilience and outcomes or reduces the chance of a problem getting worse.
There are many ways in which we can help as outlined in our offer of early help below. Early help services should support and strengthen families so that they can thrive.
What support can we offer families?
- Advice and support to promote good attendance
- Open door policy
- Liaising with external services, e.g. Child and Family Wellbeing, Children Social Care
- Support during appointments and in meetings
- Help to complete paperwork and forms
- Referrals to outside agencies e.g. Speech and Language therapists, CANW
- Emotional support for parents
- School nurse support
- Early Help assessment which may involve support from external agencies
- Providing information and signposting to other services in your local area
What support can we offer children in school?
- Small group interventions
- Nurture support
- Lego therapy
- Curriculum provision tailored to individual needs
- Additional transition support
- Extracurricular clubs
- Life education visits linked to anti-bullying, online safety and positive relationships
- A-life online – wellbeing resources used in the classroom
- Pre-loved uniform
Why would I request early help?
There are lots of reasons why people might look for early help. It could be that you’re worried about your child’s health, development or behaviour or about how they’re doing at school. It may be that you’re worried about housing or money and how that is impacting your family. It could be that you have concerns about domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol or crime. Your child might be a carer for a SEND sibling, or you might have had a bereavement in the family. Whatever the concern, it is OK to ask for help.
Where can I get early help?
If you feel you and your family might need support to solve some problems, please contact Mr Bowden (Headteacher and DSL) on head@slyne-with-hest.lancs.sch.uk or 01524 823505 or Mrs Waterhouse (SENDCo and Deputy DSL) on k.waterhouse@slyne-with-hest.lancs.sch.uk .
What will happen if I ask for early help?
We will arrange a meeting to discuss your concerns. Then we will complete an early help assessment. This looks at the strengths you already have and what help and support you might need. Completing an early help assessment ensures that we can determine what it is you feel you need support with and how this can be done. You can talk about things that are going well and things that you’re proud of as well as things you are finding a challenge. We will also discuss your child or children to make sure we all understand how they are feeling and anything they think they might want help with.
What happens next will be different for every family. If an Early Help assessment is carried out and actions are identified, we will then call Team Around the Family (TAF) meetings. This ensures that we have regular meetings with all professionals involved to get the best outcomes for the family. You have control over what happens next and can say what you want.
The following links take you to areas of the LCC website for further support and guidance:
The Early Help Assessment and Plan - Lancashire County Council
Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) - local offer - Lancashire County Council
Getting adult social care support - Lancashire County Council