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Find out about the Early Help approach that supports families in North Yorkshire.
What is Early Help?
Early Help is North Yorkshire’s new approach to ensure children, young people and their families receive the right support at the right time to stop problems escalating.
In North Yorkshire we believe Early Help is a collaborative approach, not a provision. All children and young people will receive universal services; however some children and young people because of their needs or circumstances will require extra support to achieve their potential. Therefore, the purpose of Early Help is to work together to resolve problems before they become overwhelming, long term and costly to the child, young person, family and the wider community. Early Help enables children, young people and their families that have become overwhelmed by difficulties to make better choices, learn new skills and have aspirations to turn their lives around.
Who should offer Early Help?
As a basic principle, the first person to offer support to a child or young person and their family should be the professional identifying the issue; Early Help Champion.
In North Yorkshire every professional working with or engaging with children and families, regardless of organisation, status or position has a responsibility to deliver Early Help and support the family to access appropriate services to enable positive parenting. Early Help can be provided by a range of staff in different organisations, such as health services, schools, early year’s providers and a range of voluntary, community and faith sector services. Early Help is the term used by all agencies to describe North Yorkshire’s approach to providing early support to families so that children, young people and their families are safe, happy and ready for school, work and life’s challenges. Early Help is the right help, at the right time, in the right place.
Early Help Strategy
The Early Help Strategy (pdf / 1 MB) sets out our ambitions for Early Help services across North Yorkshire, describing how partners will work together to strategically plan and deliver services, outlining:
- the steps that we will take to streamline the Early Help processes
- the support to be provided to ensure that services are effectively working together
- how we will keep children and families at the centre of our services
- how we will deliver early help and support at the earliest opportunity
Find out more about Children and Families: Early Help Offer and our children and family hubs.
Contact us
To speak to someone in your area about support from the Children and Families – Early Help Teams, please contact us.
You can make a referral to Early Help using a Universal Referral Form, available on the North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership website: