Early Help Service

Early Help Service

Enfield’s Early Help Service recognises the important role that families have in improving outcomes for their children. We take a preventative approach to enable families to support themselves and boost resilience. The offer empowers parents or anyone else in a parenting role to achieve the best outcomes for their children, young people, families, and communities.

We work with the whole family to improve wellbeing, relationships, behaviour and communication by offering advice, support and direct interventions at any point in a child or young person’s life, from pre-birth to adulthood, and the type of support available will depend on their needs. When an issue arises that can’t be dealt with solely by the family or universal services, we use targeted, Early Help services to address the needs of a child and their family.

Aim of the Early Help Service:

To focus on Early Help, prevention and getting the right services to the family at the right time.

Early Help will:

• enable more joined up service provision
• provide a holistic service for families.
• prevent duplication or gaps in provision.
• reduce barriers and bureaucracy.
• enable families to have a smooth transition between services.

We want families to:

• be resilient, thrive and strengthen their communities.
• preserve family life wherever possible.
• have the best physical and mental health.
• support children in their learning and education.
• be as economically self-sufficient as possible.
• live free of crime and domestic abuse.

The Services

We offer an intensive period of intervention with families. We listen, support, and advise by offering parenting strategies, programmes and workshops.

As a universal service we accept self-referrals from families.

We can:

• Support families to prevent family breakdown
• Support with concerns around education, health and family relationships
• Offer advice around chastisement, curfews, challenging behaviours and boundary setting.
• Offer advice around communicating with children and young people, e.g. healthy relationships, substance misuse.
• Early Help Triage Duty
• Surgery meetings with families
• Parenting Programmes
• Provide one to one whole family case work intervention
• Employment Programmes
• Deliver Domestic Abuse/Violence, TAF and Reducing Parental Conflict training
• Volunteer programme

Early Help Triage Support

Our duty workers are at hand to provide advice, guidance, and assurance
We accept referrals and general enquiries from parents and professionals

• Advice and guidance
• Referrals to specialist agencies
• Signposting
• Parenting programme
• Direct work with the family

Children’s Centre

The Children’s Centre provides opportunities for families with children under 5, to learn, develop and meet with other families.

Enfield’s Children’s Centre offers a targeted programme focusing on play and communication, which is at present being delivered via a bookable system for the play sessions.

In addition to this and other universal health sessions, such as Health Visiting and Midwifery, the Children’s Centre offers access to a range of more targeted services at sites across the borough.

These include:
Speech, Language and Communication programmes
Family support workers
Employment and benefits advice from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau
Counselling and support sessions from Enfield Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Enfield Parent Infant Partnership (EPIP)
Parenting course BAP (being a Parent)

For more information on services and the referral process call our duty line on 0208 379 2002 or email Earlyhelp@enfield.gov.uk

To refer to the Early Help Service, professionals and families should make a referral through the Childrens

Portal: https://cp.childrensportal.enfield.gov.uk/web/portal/pages/home