Early Help
Frizinghall Primary School Early Help Offer
Miss Wetherall, Mr Ruddock and Mrs Rehman are the Early Help Leads.
What is Early Help?
Early Help is a way of getting extra help and support when your family needs it, getting it as soon as issues arise, rather than waiting until things escalate. It’s for children and young people and their families.
It’s available at any point in a child’s life, from pregnancy through to adolescence (19 years old), and up to age 24 for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
Help can come from all kinds of services and organisations who work together to support your family.
You might be using some of these services already, however we want to make sure they are providing the right support for you and your family’s needs.
Early Help in Bradford
School works in partnership with the Bradford West Family Hub based on Toller Lane.
Family Hubs can help you with:
- Activities for children under five and their families and for older children and young people
- Parenting support from birth to 18 or up to 24 with a disability
- Health advice for young people and families such as mental health
- Support around the 2,3, and 4-year-old offer to get in to a childcare setting.
- Supporting children and young people attend school
Family Hubs also include the support provided through the 0-18 Public Health children's services team.
This includes health visitors and school nurses:
- To support parents on their parenting journey, from getting ready to be parents and giving birth, to child’s toddler years and starting school
- Help parents with issues like baby’s sleeping pattern, teething and toilet training
- Help parents to look after themselves.
- Work within schools, other education providers and the local community to support children and young people of school age, and those who care for them.
- work together with people to offer support and advice about healthy living
Families and Young Persons Information
This is a free, impartial service offering advice, information and signposting to children, young people and families within the Bradford district. Here you can find information and advice pages for all aspects of family life, a service directory and a guide to local activities and events.
Frizinghall Primary School Early Help
Day to Day Support
We have an ‘open door’ policy to communicate, providing time to talk to all parents, children and families, to ensure all children are safe, happy and learning.
We are available to talk via telephone and face to face and provide time for our parents to communicate and work with us. We are also available through the Studybugs messaging system.
We encourage children to raise any concerns/worries with us and, through our PSHE curriculum, we teach them how to ask for help, how to look after their mental and physical well-being, and what constitutes healthy relationships.
Focused Support
All families can have times when difficulties arise, it can be hard to recognise this. At Frizinghall Primary School, we play a role in supporting families to address these difficulties through more focused support, which may include bringing in support via an external agency.
Early Help Assessment
For those children and families whose needs and circumstances make them more vulnerable, or where schools need the support of other agencies to meet the needs of the family, a coordinated multi-agency approach is usually best.
In Bradford, this is achieved through undertaking an Early Help Assessment and assigning a Lead Practitioner, usually someone from the school whom the family have the best relationship with.
The Lead Practitioner will work closely with the family to ensure they receive the support they require at the right time.
The following lists illustrates some of the Early Help Support is available at Frizinghall Primary School:
- Support for families through our Family Learning Mentor
- Support for children through our Learning Mentor
- Support for attendance
- Support with transition from nursery to reception, including support for online school applications for parents
- Support with transition to secondary school, including support for online school applications for parents
- Interventions or personalised programmes to support educational, social, physical and emotional needs.
- Parent workshops
- Parent Events
- School nurse referrals
- Referrals to external agencies e.g. CAMHS, Early Help Work/Benefit, Family Aide Worker.
- Signposting to external agencies and training e.g. Getting into back in work or college, Family Links, Foodbanks, Mental Health agencies
- Support with uniforms through a voucher scheme
- Support with the cost of educational visits
- Support with Free School Meals Applications
- Free online safety courses, guides and information via National Online Safety
- Toddler Group
- Parent Coffee Mornings with invited guests e.g. PCSO team
- Early Help Drop in sessions
- Nurture Group support for SEND children
