Section 3: Shared tools and methods for our partnership approach
Providing the Right Help at the Right Time (RHRT) with the right people
The Right Help Right Time Guidance describes the roles and responsibilities of partners within the Early Help offer based on children and young people’s needs.
RHRT1 (Universal Offer) - Families access services and get advice.
Children and young people make good overall progress in most areas of development and are able to access the universal services that they are entitled to.
This level of help focuses on the provision of universal services for families that are available to all and will support all children and families to be healthy, safe, achieve and make a positive contribution to society.
Services will work closely with each other, have a good understanding of each other’s ‘offer’ to support children and families in the community by providing access to the information, advice, guidance and services appropriate to their need. These services will also identify children, young people and families who may need early help and be fully confident in how to request early help and support, through local referral arrangements and in connection with the Family Hubs.
RHRT level 2 (Targeted Early Help) - Families get help
Children, young people and their families may have a higher risk of achieving lower outcomes than their peers and will require additional help with accessing service delivery. Children, young people and families have a low risk to poorer outcomes than their peers and require some help with a particular issue and so need an early help offer to access a service or provision of help.
This level focuses on services delivering a timely response that can be delivered by a single additional agency. Families may need access to an enhanced offer from one service, whilst others may need to access more than one and would benefit from receiving these through the Family Hub Offer. Other families may need advice to understand who can help and how to access this help.
Completion of an early help assessment is recommended to help inform a targeted response, or a single agency may choose to complete their own assessment. This should then be recorded using the Early Help Module (EHM) as evidence of providing Early Help.
Services will work closely with each other, have a good understanding of each other’s ‘offer’ in order to support children and families in the community by providing access to the additional support services as well as information, advice and guidance appropriate to their need.
These services will identify children in need of early help, assess these needs, provide early help, and record this Early Help to help ensure children’s outcomes are improved. Single agency services will also be able to request additional support if the child, young person, or family’s needs require additional support to what the single agency is able to provide, or if the child’s needs are likely to require a multi-agency coordinated response.
RHRT level 3 (Intensive family support/ Specialist services) - Families get more help
Children, young people and families have identified needs that are increasingly complex or unmet and are at risk of harm and poor outcomes.
This is when services must work together with the child, young person or family and a coordinated /targeted integrated response is required to support these families. This level of support focuses on a multi- agency, coordinated support for children, young people and families where needs are complex and a whole family approach is required.
Services should work together with clear systems and processes for recording the help provided by the team around the family.
An Early Help Assessment identifies the holistic needs of the family, this must be completed by an appropriate lead professional to coordinate and deliver the support required. This family support should be intensive and focused to enable families to address the difficulties they are experiencing and to prevent them escalating. Services will bring together their Early Help resource into an Early Help Plan.
Services will be required to identify, assess, provide, coordinate and record early help at this level. Services that already know the child, young person or family are usually in the best position to initiate the early help assessment and may then need to include other services in the assessment of need.
Children Service’s Supporting Families Team can also be accessed through an early help assessment to contribute to that assessment and/or to the Early Help plan to meet the needs of children and young people when appropriate. The Supporting Families team may also initiate and co-ordinate the Early Help assessment and/or plan when there are at least three presenting issues when there is no other service currently supporting the family, or it is appropriate for children’s services to do so based on the presenting needs. Families should be encouraged to access the activities and services within the Family Hub offer to complement the intensive bespoke family support, to help their family thrive and to continue to access universal services.
RHRT level 4 (Statutory Services) - Families get risk support
Children, young people and families have identified needs that are increasingly complex or unmet, and/or are enduring.
Children and young people who require statutory intervention or support from Children’s Social Care require this level of support because they are at significant risk of harm and their outcomes being significantly affected. Children’s Services work closely with partners to ensure that children identified as being at risk of harm and those with the highest needs in Coventry are protected and supported. They have specialist teams who work with children, young people and families offering focused social work interventions and where needed with the support from key universal partners such as schools, youth services, health visitors and GPs.
All practitioners working in Coventry with any contact with children and young people have a responsibility to identify children at significant risk of harm and refer to the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and the police if they are in imminent danger or are subject to crime.
Approaches to assessment and measuring impact
The Early Help Partnership recognises the importance of undertaking whole family assessments to identify the needs of children and young people.
Signs of Safety
The Signs of Safety approach is based on the use of strength-based interview techniques and techniques drawn from Solution Focused therapy.
Partners and professionals to work collaboratively and in partnership with families and children to help identify any risk, produce action plans which aim to increase safety and reduce risk and by focusing on strengths, accessible resources, and available networks. All practitioners working within the Early Help offer will receive training and support to use Signs of Safety as their key practice model.
We will talk to families about what they are worried about, what is working well and what needs to happen next to help children, young people and their families.
The Early Help Assessment (EHA) and Early Plan
The Early Help Assessment recognises the importance of undertaking whole family assessments to identify the needs of children and young people. It provides a framework for professionals and families to work together to improve outcomes for children, utilising the Signs of Safety approach. The Early Help Assessment is embedded in the Coventry Safeguarding Children Partnership’s safeguarding procedures (Right Help, Right Time Guidance) and assists professionals in understanding the causes of difficulties and to identify and deliver the best and most appropriate support to the family.
An Early Help Assessment requires a high-quality whole family approach that:
- Is child-centred and focused on action and outcomes for children.
- Is holistic and considers the needs of the whole family.
- Addresses the needs within the family and any risks the child faces from within the wider community/contextual safeguarding.
- Ensures that the voice of the child is heard.
- Identify risks to the safety and welfare of children.
- Builds on strengths as well as identifying presenting needs.
- Is integrated in its approach by working multi-agency and multi- disciplinary to meet complex needs.
- Is a continuing process which focuses on sustainable changes.
- Leads to relevant action, including the provision of services.
- Reviews interventions on an ongoing basis.
- Details a transparent intervention plan which is owned by the family.
Once a lead professional completes an Early Help Assessment and has understood and identified the level of need a child, young person, or family have, the professional is responsible for taking appropriate action. They should work together with the family in devising an Early Help Plan and decide the most appropriate agencies to be involved to support the family to address the identified needs. The plan is reviewed regularly to recognise progress and areas that require further attention with an aim to ensure sustainable changes have occurred for the child and their family.
Tool to measure impact
As an Early Help Partnership it is important that we have methods to measure the impact of intervention and support delivered to children and their families through the delivery of family support. It is also important that children and families can see the positive changes they made in their own lives, however small they might be.
Being able to measure the changes in families' lives also supports our understanding of which services and interventions have the most impact, allowing services to do more of what makes a real difference. The ability to measure impact and progress has been embedded into the local case management system (Early Help Module). A baseline scale is identified in the assessment for each area of need and these are reviewed and rescaled. The review and re-scaling continue throughout the family’s journey to closure helping practitioners and the family understand when there is enough progress and resilience built to end the targeted help.
Information Sharing Agreement (ISA)
Effective sharing of information between practitioners, local organisations and agencies is essential for early identification of need, assessment and service provision to keep children safe. Serious Case Reviews have highlighted that missed opportunities to record, understand the significance of and share information in a timely manner can have severe consequences for the safety and welfare of children.
Practitioners should be proactive in sharing information as early as possible to help identify, assess and respond to risks or concerns about the safety and welfare of children. Whether this is when problems are first emerging, or where a child is already known to local authority Children’s Services (e.g. they are being supported as a child in need or have a child protection plan). Practitioners should be alert to sharing important information about any adults with whom that child has contact, which may impact the child’s safety or welfare.
Fears about sharing information must not be allowed to stand in the way of the need to promote the welfare, and protect the safety, of children, which must always be the paramount concern. This is described in the Working Together to Safeguard Children 2019 report.
Practitioners must have due regard to the relevant data protection principles which allow them to share personal information, as provided for in the Data Protection Act 2018 and the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UKGDPR). To share information effectively:
- All practitioners should be confident of the processing conditions under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UKGDPR which allow them to store and share information for safeguarding purposes, including information which is sensitive and personal, and should be treated as ‘special category personal data’.
- Where practitioners need to share special category personal data, they should be aware that the Data Protection Act 2018 contains ‘safeguarding of children and individuals at risk’ as a processing condition that allows practitioners to share information.
Professionals can override consent when being able to demonstrate in the person's best interest that a safe guarding concern is present.
All members of the Early Help Partnership, including those delivering in the Family Hub offer, must sign the Information Sharing Agreement, 2023 and are provided with the Privacy Notice for Children’s Services. This ISA will be reviewed every three years and as required.