Working with you and your family

At Leyland St James Primary School, we recognise the challenges that families face in bringing up children. Family life can be complicated and sometimes you may need some support. If you have a problem at home, please get in touch – we can support you in lots of ways. 

What is early help?

Early help means providing support to our children and families as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life.

There are many ways in which we can help as outlined in our offer of early help below. Early Help services should support and strengthen families so that they can thrive.

We follow the Working Well with Children and Families Guidance:

https://www.lancashiresafeguarding.org.uk/media/19299/wwwcf-part-1-and-2-final.pdf

Lancashire CSAP (Children’s Safeguarding Assurance Partnership) website:

https://www.safeguardingpartnership.org.uk/

The CSAP website is full of useful safeguarding and CP information.

Your Family’s Early Help Assessment and Family RADAR has replaced the CAF document.

Early Help Assessment – Section E – family radar

The Early Help Assessment and Plan features a family radar. The family radar is linked to the cycle of change and will help you to identify which areas of support the family need the most. By completing a family radar, we are trying to get the families to understand at what point of the cycle of change they are at.

Support for families may include: 

• Advice and support to promote good attendance
• Liaising with external services e.g. Housing and Children Social Care.
• Support during appointments and in meetings.
• Help to complete paperwork and forms, e.g. housing, school letters, grant applications and benefits.
• Referrals to outside agencies e.g. Paediatric Learning Disability Team and Speech and Language Therapists etc.
• Emotional support for parents
• SEND parent drop ins with Headteacher/SENDCo
• School nurse support
• Early Help Assessment which may involve support from external agencies
• Children and Family Wellbeing pastoral visits 
• Providing information and signposting to other services in your local area. 

Support for children whilst in school may include:

• Lunchtime games club
• Bespoke learning interventions
• Pre loved uniform
• Additional transition support
• Extra curricular clubs
• School nurse support
• Pastoral Support
• Guidance and support with school uniform

Why would I request early help?

There are lots of reasons why people look for early help. It could be that you’re worried about your child’s health, development or behaviour, or how they’re doing at school. It may be that you’re worried about money or housing and how that is impacting on your family. Maybe your child or family is affected by domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol, or crime. Perhaps your child is a carer for their SEND sibling, or maybe you’ve had a bereavement in the family that’s made life a challenge.

Whatever the concern, it’s okay to ask for help.

Where can I get early help?

If you feel you and your family might need support to solve some problems, please do not hesitate to contact me (Mr Atherton) via the school office.

bursar@leyland-st-james.lancs.sch.uk 

What will happen if I ask for early help?

I will give you a call to either complete a home visit or you could come into school and we can talk about the problems/concerns you’re experiencing. I  will ask what help and support you think you might need. This is called an early help assessment.

Early help assessment is nothing to be worried about. It’s just a conversation to work out how to help you determine what it is you feel you need support with and how this can be done.   You can talk about things that are going well and things that you’re proud of as well as things that you’re finding a challenge.

We will also discuss your child or children in your family to make sure they understand how they are feeling and anything they think they might want some help with. 

What happens next will be different for every family. If an Early Help assessment is carried out and actions are identified, we will then call Team Around the Family   (TAF) meetings. Again, this is nothing to be worried about. It just ensures we have a regular meeting with all professionals involved to get the best outcome for the family.  You have control over what happens next and can say what you want. 

For more information on Early Help please click on the link below 

https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/practitioners/supporting-children-and-families/early-help-assessment/