Early help is about all agencies across Barnsley providing support to potentially vulnerable children young people and families as soon as problems start to emerge, or when there is a strong likelihood that problems will emerge in the future.
Early help may occur at any point in a child or young person’s life, from childhood to adolescence, and is about agencies providing the right help, at the right time, in the right place to reduce or prevent problems escalating.
Our approach
It's vital that people who work with the children, young people and their families can see that there may be a problem that they need help with. Midwifes, health visitors, teachers, teaching staff, school meals assistants, youth workers, employment advisers, housing officers etc can have a conversation with families to talk about their needs. This will start the process to find help for families.
All agencies in Barnsley are committed to improving children and young people’s outcomes set out in our Barnsley Early Help Strategy.
We want to work together to empower local people and communities to build capacity and resilience to do more for themselves.
We'll do this by:
- Engage: Building positive and trusting relationships based on honest and open conversations with children, young people and their families.
- Empower: Families are the best people to know what they're struggling with. We'll listen to everyone in the family and build a plan and all work together to get the right help.
- Enable: We'll support families to come together and use their own resources and strengths to deal with challenges. Families will be shown how to work and lead on their own plan. This will help families to build skills so they can deal with problems for themselves now and in the future.
By working together, we can ensure the best outcomes for all our youngsters and contribute to Barnsley 2030 plan.
- Everyone is able to enjoy a life in good physical and mental health.
- Fewer people live in poverty, and everyone has the resources they need to look after themselves and their families.
- People can access the right support, at the right time and place and are able to tackle problems early.
- Our diverse communities are welcoming, supportive and resilient.
- Children and young people aim high and achieve their full potential with improved educational achievement and attainment.
- Everyone has the chance to create wider social connections and enjoy cultural experiences.
- Lifelong learning is promoted and encouraged, with an increase in opportunities that will allow people to get into, progress at and stay in work.
- Everyone fulfils their learning potential, with more people completing higher-level skills studies than ever before.
- Residents, businesses and organisations are more confident in accessing and using digital resources, benefitting all aspects of daily life.
By working together to help achieve these outcomes we use common language, processes, and tools to support children, young people and families You can find these common resources in our Early Help Toolkit.
Keeping children safe - statutory guidance
- Working together to safeguard children including the need to offer an early help assessment to families where needed. This enables details sharing, effective planning for families and a coordinated service response.
- What to do if you're worried a child is being abused
- Keeping children safe in education