Professionals' information

Early help is everyone's business, promoting a shared responsibility for the wellbeing of children and families. It’s about support for children, young people and families that reduces the chance of a problem getting worse, and which at the same time improves a family’s resilience and outcomes. 

It's not a single service, but a network of services and processes delivered by a local authority, health, early years, education and voluntary sector organisations. 

Early help is an important part of safeguarding children and safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. If, at any point, you feel a child is at risk of significant harm, please follow the Shropshire Safeguarding Community Partnership procedures.

If you think a family could need some extra help and support, you should first invite them to have a conversation and carry out an Early Help Assessment to help identify their needs. We've created a tool called the Circle of Support which is a more family friendly document, covering the same assessment criteria. You might find it easier to use that to the prompt the conversation.

The information you gather will then need to be inputted as an Early Help Assessment onto EHM – our Early Help case management system. You and the family can then agree a Family Action Plan and record this level 2 support on EHM. We call this an Early Help Episode. There is also a Family Agreement Form you will need to complete with the family, which gives their agreement for their information to be put onto EHM.

If other professionals have concerns about the same family, they're able to see that you’re supporting the family which should prompt them to contact you so the support the family receives becomes better coordinated, with no duplication, or omissions.

If after a period of Level 2 support you and the family feel they need some additional support, you'll have everything in place to request a targeted level of intervention, directly from the Early Help Episode.

If you're not registered for EHM, please email SupportingFamiliesTeam@shropshire.gov.uk to book you onto our training.