Resources for practitioners

Early help resources

Early help aims to give children, young people and families the right support at the right time, to reduce the need for higher level interventions.

These resources will help you understand the level of need and how an early help approach could help and provide templates to help you get started.

Templates

Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting template (DOCX, 32.33KB).

You can see an example of what the template might look like when it's been completed in our Example of a Team Around the Family plan template (DOCX, 41KB).

Advice for parents

You can print and share this Early help leaflet (DOCX, 169KB) with parents to help them understand the Team Around the Family process.

Guides for practitioners

These guides will help you through the early help process and include:

• Understanding the needs of a family, child or young person
• Effective Support Windscreen on the Essex Safeguarding Children Board website
• Putting together an Early Help Plan
• What is a Team Around the Family (TAF)?
• How to hold a Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting
• How to hold a virtual Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting

Presentations

These presentations have been developed as tools for safeguarding leads to help their organisations get a better understanding about what early help means for them and the children and young people they work with.

• Understanding need presentation (PPTX, 919KB)
• Early help approaches presentation PPTX, 219KB)
• Introduction to the Children and Families Hub presentation (PPTX, 324KB)
• Requesting support at levels 3 and 4 presentation (PPTX, 257KB)

Our early help offer

Find out more about our Early help offer (PDF, 4MB).

Posters to print and display

You might find it helpful to print and display these posters:

Team Around the Family Support Officer (TAFSO) poster (PDF, 283KB)