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Ext. 8859
The Early Help Service went ‘live’ from April 1 st 2015; the service offers a new model of delivery for people with complex dependencies that reflects a person and family-centred approach and provides interventions at the earliest possible opportunity. It has been developed following a fundamental redesign of mainstream services to support people to help themselves, focussing on their strengths, giving them the skills to problem solve and enabling them to manage their own lives. The approach builds on households positive aspects and looks to strengthen resilience rather than solely focusing on needs and problems. The service recognises the complexities and vulnerability of individuals and families who do not fit neatly into single service offer around issues relating to mental health, drugs and alcohol, housing or parenting.
The offer is available for all people with issues and emerging problems across a number of levels, from community based services through to intensive one to one case work. The service replaces multiple overlapping services with different and separate referral routes, so will simplify and streamline referrals. It strengthens the co-operative approach by actively engaging local community and voluntary groups to provide peer support, life coaching and mentoring and provide a community connector facility that links individuals and families into local groups and activities. Services can refer directly into the community services, or people can self-refer. For other elements of the service an Early Help assessment is the tool that will identify needs and support action planning; referrals into the Early Help team can be made via an on-line referral link.
We estimate that the service will support around 3500 service users 1:1 and around 4000 via group-work or one-off appointments, with a range of needs, particularly:

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Mental health issues
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Drug and alcohol issues
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Housing issues
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Behaviour/lifestyle-related physical health issues
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Domestic violence/relationship issues
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Parenting issues
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General family support needs
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People out of work with complex barriers to employment
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Involvement in crime (current or historic)
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People with learning disabilities (early intervention and prevention)
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Older people needing early help.
The service is targeted at people with emerging problems around these areas, but who do not yet meet thresholds for statutory support; Early Help will aim to ensure they receive support at the earliest possible point to prevent them needing specialist services.
Presentations at the Primary Collaboratives, the Primary Hubs and Schools Safeguarding
Forum have set out the Early Help approach and what is available to schools. The Early
Help Development and Process teams provide the infrastructure and will support schools to complete Early Help assessments, understand the referral process and provide training and support on all aspects of the offer; phone support is also available. In addition we have commissioned a further programme of training by Intraquest, the company who have been delivering Engagement training for teams across Oldham to support different ways of working with families. This training has proved key to the successful engagement of families who have previously been reluctant; for example 96% of referrals to the Intensive
Casework team have engaged with the service and demonstrated positive outcomes.
There is currently no cost for this training as we want schools to be able to develop their approach and capacity to deliver, alongside Early Help teams.
Referrals into the Early Help service can be made electronically via the following link; http://www.oldham.gov.uk/early_help_referral there is an expectation that an assessment will be completed along with the referral, in order that we can make the best devious around the support for families. Holistic is an online system for recording family details, case notes, and review meetings,which schools will have access to; training for this is provided by the
EH team. As the system is rolled out it will replace the old paper forms provided by CAF; it will make the recording process less onerous once families are entered into the system and will provide a clear audit trail and demonstrate outcomes for families via the Early
Help scoring and reviews.
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For schools using the Holistix system to document the work they are doing with families, we will be able to provide reports at school level to demonstrate outcomes for all families being worked with.
This information can be used to support your evidence for OFSTED as it will capture and monitor numbers of pupils supported by multi agency services and demonstrate impact captured through the recording and case management system. Child in Need and Child
Protection cases will be dealt with in the usual way through Children’s Social care.
This is illustrated in the diagram below; for 2015/16, the delivery mix will be:
New external commission delivered by Oldham Together, a partnership of local providers – contract value c. £1.5million: o Focused on support provided via volunteers, voluntary and community agencies and community networks; low level 1 to 1 outreach, signposting, engagement, group-work and development of local groups. This service will also provide health checks, health trainers and smoking cessation
Alignment of existing contracts - c. £630,000: o Focused on: engagement case work, providing medium term support
Restructured services through Oldham Council for value of
£1.3 million o Focused on: infrastructure support to increase the capacity of services to support the new offer and manage referrals; o Increased capacity of Intensive case work support for the highest complexity of cases
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The Early Help Service is currently delivered through funding drawn from a number of services who have recognised the need to work differently to achieve better outcomes and make savings to the public purse. Working in this way avoids duplication and overlap and provides one consistent approach regardless of the level of service being delivered.
Evidence from our pilot work has demonstrated a 96% success rate in engaging with families who have previously been reluctant
Until 2014-15, school investment in the delivery of the Parent Support Advisor Service for
Primary and Secondary age children was £230,000 per annum; the service worked with an average of 180 families, delivering parenting support.
In 2015-16 the Early Help Service will work 1 to1 with 3,500 households, the majority of which will have school age children and will work with the whole household addressing a multitude of needs.
This paper seeks agreement for a financial investment from schools from 2016-17 onwards to support the continued delivery of the Early Help Service; the investment requested to continue delivery to support schools through Early Help is
£350,000.
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In the pilot phase of Early Help we were able to demonstrate that working with the whole family where children were on the edge of, or had been, permanently excluded, could reduce the demand on services in and around schools and was able to get pupils back on track.
We are also beginning to demonstrate that using the Early Help approach has prevented a permanent exclusion and move to Kingsland, or has meant a pupil can be moved from
Kingsland back to mainstream school and afforded a cost saving.
1) To reach agreement through the schools forum to invest into the model as a collective; all schools would be able to make use of the service –this is the preferred option
2) To take up the offer based on pupil numbers by individual school agreement; this will result in a reduced amount of investment as some schools will not wish to contribute. Also, in this model the amount of investment required from some schools is small compared to the level of support we know they receive; and some of the smaller Primary schools are being asked to contribute at a level that would not justify (potentially) very few referrals or not needing the service at all.
3) To agree the offer by District (schools collaborative areas)
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