Early Help at St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary School
Working with you and your family:
At St Bernadette’s Primary school we recognise the challenges that families may face in raising their families. 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.
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. court appearances, housing, school letters, grant applications and benefits.
- Referrals to outside agencies e.g. Continence service, Paediatric Learning Disability Team and Speech and Language Therapists.
- Emotional support for parents
- Information on local specialist training events linked to additional needs through the termly SEND newsletter
- School nurse support
- Early Help Assessment which may involve support from external agencies
- Providing information and signposting to other services in your local area.
Support for children whilst in school may include:
- Mental health champions – NEW
- Bespoke learning and social communication interventions and support
- Pre loved uniform
- Additional transition support
- Extra-curricular clubs
- Rock Kidz visits linked self-esteem, anti-bullying, emotional health and wellbeing
- Life Education Van visits linked to anti bullying, online safety and Positive relationships
- School nurse support
- Emotional literacy support
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 affecting 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, Mrs Shoulder on head@st-bernadettes.lancs.sch.uk or 01524 63934. Alternatively, you can pop in and see me.
What will happen when 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 will talk about the problems you’re experiencing. I will ask you about the strengths you already have and 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.
Remember, it’s your choice to have Early Help. If you have any questions please contact me
For more information on Early Help please click on the Link below
What’s on at Lancaster Children and family wellbeing centres?
https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/children-education-families/family-hubs/