When is an Early Help Assessment needed?
If you are working with a family and identify they would benefit from support from a range of services, Early Help is a great way of taking a co-ordinated, robust and well-planned approach to promote sustained and positive changes to family life.
An Early Help Assessment (EHA) is a way of supporting both children and parents/carers; it considers the whole family and takes a strength-based approach to support to build on what is working well to enable families to feel increased resilience and better able to sustain positive changes into the future.
You can download the Early Help assessment form here.
An interagency referral form will be required before submitting the EHA, downloadable form here Worried About A Child : Isle of Wight Safeguarding Children Partnership .
You can share this leaflet with parents to explain the process: Early Help Assessment Leaflet
The most effective way to complete an EHA is to listen to the family to find out what is going well and what their worries are. It’s important to clarify what services are already working with a family and which services may need to become involved to further support the needs identified.
The EHA is child-centered and looks at three areas of family life to ensure the whole family is considered throughout the process.
When completing an EHA it’s important to identify whether a referral into the Supporting Families Programme would be beneficial. This would allow the family up to 9 months of support with a family practitioner, visiting the family's homes and tailoring support to the family’s needs.
Please see here for more information about the Supporting families programme (iow.gov.uk)
Once the EHA has been completed the next step would be to arrange a Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting within 4 weeks.