Croydon Children and Young People’s
Early Help for Croydon’s Families
2014-2017
(reviewed 17th June 2015)
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Most of the time families enjoy their lives and can cope with problems that emerge with the help of their extended family, friends and
community. Our ambition is that when extra support is needed confident and skilled practitioners work in partnership with families
to help assess their needs and identify the best services to help prevent problems from escalating
We have refreshed our 2012 Early Help Plan and continue to build on our aspirations
 Babies, children, young people and families build their resilience and autonomy
 Services are delivered at the earliest possible moment to prevent the escalation of problems
 All partners share responsibility and are accountable for their actions
 Services are outcome focussed and evidence based
 Practitioners are informed, resilient and responsive
In this next plan our increased emphasis will be to engage all partners, both children and adult services, in a ‘think family’ approach as we
believe strong families offer babies, children and young people a firm foundation for life.
What do we mean by early help?
By ‘early help’ we mean:
- preventing problems from arising in the first place so that families continue to be able to support themselves
- getting to problems early as they emerge so that they do not escalate and reduce families capacity to be independent
- all practitioners working positively and in partnership with families as part of an ‘early help’ approach
We have an Early Help Board which is a sub-group of the Children and Families Partnership. The role of the Early Help Board is to
ensure that there is an early help system across the partnership so that when families need extra support we have confident and skilled
practitioners working in partnership with families to assess their needs and identify the best services to help prevent problems from
escalating. The Board will be responsible for ensuring all partners are accountable for their contribution to the system, for unblocking
difficulties and for developing a culture of ‘early help’ across the wider adult, children and families’ workforce in Croydon.
The Board meets quarterly to review the action plan and oversee progress.
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Our Early Help plan builds on the work of the last two years by partners in Croydon including
- Family Engagement Partnerships – health services and children centres working together and identifying and working with families
with babies and young children. Based on this work we are now developing our Croydon Best Start programme
- More assessments (CAFs) were undertaken with some evidence that families are getting more of the help they need
- Children and young people continuing to achieve well at school. We have redeveloped the ‘CAF’ into an Early Help
Assessment which brings together the needs of the whole family
- Partnership approach to reducing under 18 conceptions has proved effective. For those young parents we are providing support
through our Family Nurse Partnership. We have expanded our Family Nurse Partnership Team
- Reduction in school exclusions. This work continues through the Fair Access Panels and managed moves
- Improvements in support for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. There has been extensive work by partners to
develop the strategy and to deliver enhanced services
Further information that informs our approach, service development and commissioning
There are many sources of data that help the partnership make decisions on what services are needed. For example through the
Children and Families Partnership Plan, Croydon Safeguarding Children’s Board Annual Report, Joint Strategic Needs Analysis (JSNA)
on emotional and mental health, JSNA on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence etc. We have developed an ‘early help dashboard’ which
is a set of basic indicators. We now have access to more robust early help data and are able to review the contribution of each
agency to early help assessments and referrals to MASH. We have more information for our Early Help Dashboard which is
giving a broader picture of what activities partners are engaged with to ensure children, young people and families access help
as early as possible. But we need to hear more from children, young people, families and frontline practitioners about what they think
makes a difference. Some key questions to be addressed include how much do we do? how well do we do it? is anyone better off? was
it cost effective.?
Being an Early Intervention Place
Croydon was nominated by the Early Intervention Foundation (a charity set up to drive forward early intervention in England) as one of the
first of 20 Early Intervention Places in England. Through collaboration with the Foundation and wider network of Places we will aim to
 improve outcomes for children and young people by increasing access to effective early help services that prevent personal, social and
economic cost
 increase the effectiveness and value for money of services in Croydon through the increased use of evidence of what works
 build the evidence base on the interventions that work and promote effective approaches to early help nationally.
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The Early Help Board and Children and Families’ Partnership has set five priority areas that it wants to influence.
Partnership Priorities for Early Help
Priority 1: we want all who could benefit, to be able to access high quality community-based services to prevent problems from
emerging
Central to this approach is a focus on building on the resilience and strengths of families and community. This particularly focusses on
making sure we have sufficient good quality universal services such as health services, childcare, school places, youth offer etc but also a
strong community sector that is often the first port of call for families.
Priority 2: we want all practitioners in universal settings to be able to identify emerging needs early and support families to
prevent the need for more intensive support/interventions through good quality early help assessments
The need for early help can occur at any point in time in a child or young person’s life. For early help to be available at the first possible
moment a problem starts to emerge, we need practitioners in universal and community settings to be confident and skilled practitioners
working in partnership with families using early help assessments to to help assess their needs and identify the best services.
Priority 3: we want families to benefit from high quality and effective targeted services that meet their identified needs
We need to ensure that all targeted services are evidence based so that we can be more assured that families receive the right service at
the right time. Services need to be whole family focussed, using an holistic and integrated assessment, assertive key worker and multiagency based with an agreed family plan that engages all members of the families and helps them return to independence.
Priority 4: we want investment and spending decisions to shift resources from late to early intervention
Partners will work together to oversee a collective and concerted shift of investment and spending decisions from late to early intervention
that provides better outcomes for babies, children and young people. There is a need to identify current spend against early and late
intervention and identify areas where we can best invest earlier and reduce later costs. Croydon Best Start (based on the Primary
Prevention Plan) from conception to 5 will be a key element of ensuring investment is at the very earliest stage in a child’s life.
Priority 5: we want confident practitioners to work together as part of a Croydon wide early help system
Effective early help requires all practitioners who work with babies, children, young people, families and adults who are parents to act
together and act early. This requires a whole system approach across children, adult and community service partners from schools to
police to social care to vulnerable adult services etc. We need all partners to take responsibility for playing their part in the system, to
holding on to the batton and not letting families go until they are in the right place. Systemic approaches such as ‘team around the family’,
family Early Help Assessment (CAF), information sharing all contribute to an effective early help system.
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Children and Families Partnership will monitor the following aspects of the Early Help Plan through
Priority: Increase impact of early intervention Proxy indicator:
 Number of early help assessments completed (total and by partner agency) in relation to inappropriate referrals to MASH
 Increase resilience in vulnerable families by increasing the number and percentage of closed early help assessments where outcomes are met
High level actions
Actions
Measures of achievement
Implement integrated
service for 0-5s through Best
Start programme
Establish multi-agency Board
with full parental
engagement
By 2017
Joint Chairs of Best Start
Board (Tina Hickson,
Dwynwen Stepien)
First Board report by 1st
October 2015
Best Start Transformation
Manager (Denise Clements)
2017
Denise Clements and Joint
Head of Children’s
Integrated Commissioning in
ICU (Sam Taylor)
Implement and monitor
against the use of the Early
Help pathways
Transformation programme
with key milestones is
agreed
Develop and agree
commissioning intentions
that support the delivery
programme for Croydon Best
Start
Early Help Module in place
and provided detailed
analysis by sector
50% parents on board by
2017
Appropriate parental codesign structures in place
Plan in place with 6 monthly
reporting to the signatures
of the Transformation Bid
Agree commissioning
principles and specification
Monthly reports that provide
detail of the agencies who
are undertaking early help
assessments and evidencing
a plan and
ICT problems overcome and
partners external to council
able to use EHM
11th May and full reporting
by 1st September 2015
Chair of Early Help Board
(Ian Lewis)
1st September 2015 available
to health
EMS/EHM/CRS Governance
Board
Early Help Module (EHM) in
place for partners
Presentation and discussion
with the Children’s
Safeguarding Board May in
100% increase, from current
baseline, in assessments for
under 5s
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Completion date
1st January 2015 available to
schools
31st March 2016
Lead
Education Sub-group and
Health Sub-group of Croydon
Children’s Safeguarding
relation to the partnership
commitment to early help –
recommendations will form
the action plan
50% increase, from current
base line, in assessments by
schools
Board to regularly monitor
the improvements in the use
of the Early Help Assessment
Partners accountable for
increase in EH assessments
in particular schools and
health sector – particularly
under 5’s
Training and support in place
for settings
100% schools engaged with
Early Help Advisors
100% of early years settings
knowing where to go for
support
31st March 2016
Strategic Manager for Early
Help (Debby MacCormack)
and Anita McGrath for CSCB
6 monthly report to QUAP
Strategic Manager for Early
Help (Debby MacCormack)
Training feedback showing
effective in improving
confidence of practitioners
Quarterly audit of EH with
reports and
recommendations to the
QAPP sub group of the
safeguarding board
Joint offer so that it is clear
early help is part of
safeguarding
Quality assurance audit
shows increase in % of cases
that are good or outstanding
Quality assurance evidences
improvement in early help
assessment processes across
all partners – including step
downs from CSC
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Re-commission family
support services to fit with
Best Start, Youth Offer and
other priorities
Review of commissioning
arrangements for 0-5 and 519 services commissioned
outside of the ICU alignment
with health improvement
services commissioned by
ICU as appropriate
Better use of commissioning,
contract and provider e.g.
joint monitoring where
appropriate
2016 review
Denise Clements/Sam
Taylor/Amanda Tuke
2016 for children’s centres
As and when existing
contracts end
2016 and as and when
existing contracts end
2016 for youth offer
Denise Clements
Sam Taylor
Also to ensure within
requirements of the contract
is early help & DASV training
and processes as part of
safeguarding requirement
New commissioning
arrangements for Best Start
in place
New commissioning
arrangements for play and
youth offer which are in line
with 5-19 health
improvement commissioning
strategy led by ICU and other
5-19 preventative plans
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Dwynwen Stepien
Amanda Tuke