Early Help
Early Help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life. Providing Early Help to our children and families at our school means we can be prompt and more effective in promoting support and meeting the needs of our children and their families.
Support can be offered under an ‘Early Help’ service when families are in need of some additional support to manage the demands of family life, and can either be offered just by school staff, or by school staff and staff from other agencies such as health visitors, speech and language therapists, play therapists, CAMHS, educational psychologists or family keyworkers.
Early Help is offered and accepted on a voluntary basis, with the aim being to work with families to improve their situation. We hope that by offering support early, when problems are emerging, or beginning to have a negative impact on families' ability to cope, these problems will be easier to address with short-term involvement from services.
Broad Town School’s Early Help Offer:
Within school, we provide the following Early Help support for all children, striving to ensure concerns, no matter how small, are listened to and supported effectively, maximising the chances of effectively safeguarding all of our children.
We view behaviour as a form of communication. Often, a child's behaviour can indicate an unmet need.
Staff may become aware of unmet needs in a number of ways; noticing signs that are being communicated through children’s behaviour, listening to what children are telling staff about their lives, or through conversations with parents or carers. As a minimum, staff record this information and it is read and acknowledged by the Designated Safeguarding lead. If staff have concerns about children’s unmet needs that they wish to discuss more urgently with the safeguarding lead or the deputy safeguarding lead at the school.
We monitor and discuss the needs of these children and then decide which of the below options might be most appropriate to offer to the child and their family. All offers of support are discussed with parents and depends on the availability of resources and staffing.
Universal Support offered to children within school
- PSHE and Relationships and Sex Education Programme: Our school delivers Personal, Social, Health and Economics, (PSHE) and Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) programmes through the SCARF scheme. This programme supports the children’s understanding of how to keep themselves safe. It also broadens their understanding of strategies to develop their resilience, as well as their awareness of their mental health and approaches to keep this aspect of their lives healthy.
- Online safety: Each year group is taught online safety lessons throughout the year, linking directly with areas of computing they are working on.
- Extra-Curricular Clubs: Extra-curricular clubs are offered to all children to encourage a healthy lifestyle, relationship building, physical activity and sports, social development skills and enhancement of the curriculum.
- Safeguarding and wellbeing policies – clear systems for identifying concerns early and ensuring children feel safe.
- Quality first teaching – differentiated lessons, inclusive practice, and adjustments that meet diverse learning needs
- Positive behaviour systems – whole-school approaches to behaviour, rewards, restorative practices, and clear expectations.
Early Help Support offered within school to children and / or parents
- Additional time with a Teaching Assistant / HLTA or ELSA: this might include social/emotional work, check in times, work on anxieties etc.
- Forest School and outdoor learning opportunities – This might be on an individual basis, part of a group or whole class to work on specific skills.
- 1:1 or small group Thrive: Thrive sessions to children who need additional emotional support. Children are carefully assessed at the beginning and end of the sessions so that progress can be measured.
- In House SEND support: Mrs Cook works with children, staff and parents to ensure the children receive appropriate provision.
- Speech and Language Support: We recognise that communication is both a vital and complex skill that develops gradually over time from the moment a child is born. It is important that children develop a firm foundation of earlier skills such as listening and playing so that they can successfully develop later skills such as using tricky sounds and spelling. In Class 1, they use a range of Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) strategies either as part of whole class teaching, in a small group or 1:!
- Educational Psychologist: The school liaises with the LA Educational Psychologist who offers advice to staff through arranged surgeries.
- School Nurse: We work closely with our school nurse, who provides advice and guidance to parents on a variety of health and wellbeing issues such as sleep. She also supports some children with anxieties, wellbeing and healthy eating.