Early Help Hubs. Progress so far Date – 03/12/15

Early Help? ‘Early help is intervening early and as soon as possible to tackle problems emerging for children, young people and their families or with a population most at risk of developing problems. Effective intervention may occur at any point in a child or young person’s life’

What Early Help will do… Early Help means identifying needs within families early, and providing preventative support and intervention before problems become complex and entrenched. Early Help means offering support to very young children such as early in life, or early after the emergence of particular need. It includes both universal interventions and targeted interventions to prevent needs from escalating. Early Help allows for support to be put in place at the right time to meet family’s needs prior to issues reaching crisis point. It draws upon families own skills and promotes self-reliance behaviours. We aim to reduce the demands upon specialist and higher tier services.

Co-designing the Approach with Partners Early Help Principles Agreed: Early Identification of Need through a new need and response framework. Support to children and young people and their families as early as possible. An asset/ strengths based approach - draws upon person’s /families own skills and promotes self-reliance behaviours. A focus on Self Help – promote independence, connect people, create access to a local offer. Holistic approach to assessment – all aspects of life

However, if you have Safeguarding Concerns. There is no change here… If at any point you have safeguarding concerns or there is significant risk of harm then you must contact: Children’s Services on

Journey so far. Launch of the Early Help Strategy in July Launch of the new Levels of Need and Response Framework in July Testing and pilot of new Early Help Assessment (EHA). Increasing the number of key workers and delivering Troubled Families requirements. Design and development of the Early Help Hubs.

The Early Help Hubs. North - Abraham Moss Centre Central - Alex House South - Chorlton District Office and Bowland Rd (Etrop Court from May 2016). Went live date 28/09/15 – still developing

Key functions of the hubs Advice, guidance, triage, support for partners to develop EHAs, requests for targeted and specialist services, allocations, drop ins, problem solving fora Delivery of targeted and specialist interventions at level 3 and 4 on the Levels of Need Framework. Development of a Performance Framework with quality assurance and outcomes evaluation processes. Community capacity building and commissioning developments.

Access to the hubs (professionals only) Via professionals telephone help line North Central South Via Early Help Inbox Registering an EHA

What happens when you contact the hub? Your call or will go to the triage team. If you are requesting support for a family the triage team will gather information from you and other partners to support a decision about what would be the most suitable early help response for the family. Outcomes could be:  Signposting the family to a single agency or organisation;  Identifying someone who can work with the family to complete an EHA or supporting you to do this;  Securing a more targeted intervention for a family – including a keyworker; The team will let you know the outcome via letter/ unless your enquiry is resolved during your conversation.

The Triage Process The Triage Team comprises of MCC staff and partners who coordinate the telephone and hub in-box activity. At 2pm every day they meet and gather partnership information on all requests for support/information. They agree on the level of need and identify the next steps.  Current data sources include internal children’s social care records, school attendance data, education casework involvement, child health care records for the under 5s, housing and homelessness data, GMP data, some TF Employment Advisor information.  Work is underway to incorporate a wider range of partners into the triage process  Cases identified as needing targeted and specialist support are referred to a weekly Allocations Meeting

The Interventions There are a range of interventions permanently co-located within each hub. These include FIP, Assertive Outreach, Housing Connect and PCSOs undertaking keywork. Dependent on the location of the hub, there are other interventions co-located also. For example, the Family In Need Intervention Service in North, the Complex Families Parenting Team in Central and Evaluation Officers in South Partners undertaking keywork within other organisations hot desk within the hubs and other partners are considering how their own assessment and referral pathways might dovetail with the hub processes (eg Working Well, Wellbeing Services, CAMHS, Targeted Youth Support, Young Carers, Victim Support and ASB Vulnerability etc) Every week more partners are expressing interest in developing more integrated ways of working

Keywork partners so far include PCSOs Big Life/Working Well CRC NPS 4 school clusters (17 schools in total) Southway WCHG Northwards Great Places

The Early Help Tools Help and Support Manchester. Local offer of services, information advice and guidance. Practitioners Guidance to EH. An online handbook manchester.gov.uk/helpandsupportmanchester

manchester.gov.uk/helpandsupportmanchester

Next steps Only been operational for 2 months so still a lot to learn!! Need to refine processes around triage and incorporate wider range of information Need to work with partners to develop a robust performance framework that integrates key outcomes and indicators Expand the range of interventions participating in weekly allocations meetings Need to consider how to develop the Early Help Hubs for Children and Families into All Age Early Help Hubs that support single people and childless households as part of the Confident and Achieving Manchester public service reform work