Merton Safeguarding Children Partnership Early Help Strategy
Early Help means picking up on any problems as soon as possible so they don’t get too big, and working alongside families to put things in place to help them get better. In Merton there are lots of different services that work together with children, young people and families providing ‘Early Help’ so that their needs are met.
We want to make sure children, young people and families in Merton can get the right help, in the right place, at the right time so that things do get better. We believe that Early Help is all about identifying family needs early, working together at the lowest possible level of need to address issues or problems before they get bigger and making sure families know how and where to get support if they need, mostly through the organisations already working with children like schools or health services
For many years, services in Merton have worked well together and many families have told us that the things we have done have really helped them- this strategy was built upon feedback of user experience and was then tested through further consultation.
We want to make sure that our services continue to help families and make sure that we always think about ways to make the support even better by working in partnership with the family.
We see Early Help as an approach or a system and not a response to a family need by a single service. Our refreshed approach is one of more shared working together across the community of services, based upon evidence of what works and strong use of data and information sharing to inform our decisions. Our strategy commits everyone to developing and investing in this approach so that our ambition and vision can be achieved.
Documents
MSCP Early Help Strategy One Page Summary
Early Help Strategy Community Engagement Report