Reaching more children, young people and families through the right conversation at the right time leading to the ‘right service.’
What is early help?
Early help is simply providing support to children, young people and families as early as possible to prevent problems from escalating.
Everyone needs help sometimes and the good thing about getting it EARLY is that it can stop things from getting worse and can even stop something you might be worried about from happening if you ask for help before it happens – this is often called PREVENTION.
There are lots of places and people where you can receive ‘early help’; from school to your doctor to family support workers or youth workers and the way you access support from them will be different depending on where they are based.
What early help services does Slough Children First provide?
Slough Children First provides ‘targeted support’ services.
When there are a number of challenges impacting your family or the additional support that you have been given isn’t helping, a Family Support Worker or Targeted Youth Worker may be able to offer further support.
Working with you, your children, other family members and other professionals and services, they will complete an Early Help Assessment and create an action plan with everyone to find a way to make things better.
Everyone will work together to support your family through a ‘Team Around the Child and their Family’ process where you will be part of the ‘team’ who meet regularly to discuss the plan of support, focus on what is improving and decide on any further interventions needed.
Access to the targeted early help support is available through Slough Children First’s Referral and Assessment Team (also known as the Front Door) by self-referring or by referral from a professional.
If self-referring, please call us on 01753 875362.
If you are a professional, referring a child and family for targeted early help support, please complete the Multi-Agency Referral Form (MARF) and email to sloughchildren.referrals@sloughchildrenfirst.co.uk.
Early help guides
As we want to provide support to children, young people and families as early as possible to prevent problems from escalating, we have put together guides to help you understand our early help approach.
Early help guides for children under 10
Early help guides for children over 10
Early help guides for parents and carers
Early help guides for professionals
Additional early help services
More information coming soon.
Early help strategy
We’ve developed an Early Help Strategy for 2023-2025 with different Slough Children First partners, that sets out Slough’s vision for early help services.