Early Help Assessment and Plan
Practitioner’s Guide
Preparing for the assessment
The assessment process involves working alongside the child/young person and their family to complete
the assessment and plan with them. You will need to make sure they understand what information you
are recording and what is going to happen to it.
It will help to use plain, jargon-free language which is appropriate to the age and culture of each person.
The discussion does not have to be highly formal or presented as a ‘big event’. You will want to use a
method and style that suits you. The child/young person’s views should be included and recorded, and if
not why not. It is important to demonstrate to the child and the parent/carer that you are listening to
their views.
When preparing to undertake an Early Help Assessment and Plan you should consider all family members
to determine if there are any requirements which may be a barrier to completing the assessment e.g. the
need for an interpreter or access to a building.
You should always be open and honest in your conversation with families and sometimes difficult
questions need to be asked to gain a full understanding of the situation.
You should consider the child, young person’s and parent/carer strengths as well as needs.
This is a voluntary process. If the child and/or their parent don’t want to participate, you can’t force them,
but this should never be a barrier to accessing support services.
EHAP Guide V1
At the end of the assessment you should have a clear understanding of what the strengths and needs are,
and the actions that are needed to support the family.
If you are worried about a child’s welfare or safety seek immediate advice from your line Manager and
follow your Child Protection Procedures.
Assessment
The Early Help Assessment is replacing the Family CAF.
It works very much like the Family CAF but is designed to help people to develop self-help and selfmanagement skills in order to better meet their long term needs and to reduce their reliance on public
services.
For many families and individuals, services have tended to come into their lives and ‘fix’ things for them.
Intervened to correct problems or directly meet needs. This has resulted in some families and individuals
becoming over reliant on services leading to an expectation that things will be done for them or to them.
Experience with CAF, Family CAF and intensive work with families has helped us develop a new, simpler
and more intuitive, way for families, adults and young people to assess their own needs and for
professionals to work out ways to support them to take both ownership and control over those needs.
The Early Help Assessment is different from the Family CAF because it:
• Focuses on the parent, young person or single adult becoming in control of their own issues.
Recording
The Early Help Module of the LiquidLogic System, previously (eCAF) provides a case management system
for the storage of Early Help Assessment and Plan, delivery plan, review, meetings and a secure method of
sharing information.
It enables easy tracking and monitoring of the Early Help Assessments and Plans, both in terms of service
delivery, and for Management Information.
Information Sharing
A lot of information is collected by organisations working to support individuals and families. Some of this
information may be collected by more than one organisation. Other information might be needed by
another organisation to provide a service, or to work with a family.
So that better services for families can be provided, it is essential that we share information more
effectively. Part of the role of the Early Help process to make sure this happens.
Usually information sharing is consent led but in some circumstances we might need to share information
without consent. This might be where going to ask for consent might put a child at risk of significant harm,
or an adult at risk of harm, or where asking for consent might prejudice the prevention or detection of
crime. In these cases, it is OK to share information without consent.
EHAP Guide V1
In any situation where you are asked to share information with another person or organisation, you should
always record your decision, and the reasons for it, whether you decide to share the information or not.
This will help you to prove why you did or didn’t do something if questions are asked at a later date.
And finally, when you are sharing personal information you should always make sure you do so securely
and in the most appropriate manner. For example, can you use secure email? Password protection? Post?
Telephone? Face to Face? Shared database/computer system? Your organisation will have guidance on
how to do this.
Multi Agency Meeting
What’s it for?
Getting the family together with the right agencies to plan and deliver.
The meeting:
• Share appropriate information between the family, young person or adult and agencies.
• Use shared information to get a better, more contextual understanding of identified needs from the
assessment
• Possibly identify further needs from the emerging information
• Formulate outcome focused actions which support the family, young person or adult to take steps to
take control of the issues and eventually to address those needs
• Jointly agree those outcomes and associated actions
• Determine who is best placed to undertake them
• Establish realistic and achievable timescales for the actions
• Identify one person to help co-ordinate the plan and liaise with the family, young person or adult
• Set a date for the review meeting based on the timescales for completing the actions.
EHAP Guide V1
Review
Review meetings are to ensure that the agencies involved in supporting the family can all update regarding
the outcome plan and amend the plan accordingly
• Where actions are incomplete but some activity has occurred, consideration should be given to a revision
of the plan
• Similarly if the situation has got worse, the plan should be amended and if required specialist referrals
made
• Any new, emerging needs should also be recorded
• The date for next review meeting should be set
• In the event that all needs have been met and outcomes achieved, then a decision should be made to
close the Early Help case and this recorded on the Early Help Module.
Escalation
Experience with the CAF and Family CAF has taught us that there are three main reasons why the plan may
fail:
1. Disengagement or lack of commitment from the process by participants (this includes professionals).
2. Disguised compliance. This is where the parent, young person or adult agrees to the plan and their part
in it but fail to undertake the actions set for them. Consequently at each meeting it begins to feel that
nothing is changing and everyone becomes more and more disengaged with the process.
3. Planned actions fail to achieve positive outcomes. Should these occur, signposting to other Early Help
services should be considered
Closure
When the family have achieved their planned outcomes, the case needs to be closed on the Early Help
Module. The retention schedule for Early Help information is 6 years.
Training
To access Early Help Assessment and Plan and the role of the Case Coordinator training, please see the
TSCB training programme:
http://www.tscb.co.uk/professionals/training-and-development-for-professionals.aspx#a6
For support with the Early Help Module of the LiquidLogic system please contact
[email protected]
EHAP Guide V1