‌‌‌‌Early Help Assessment

What is an Early Help Assessment?

The Early Help Assessment (EHA) is our local assessment that is used by all agencies working with children and their families in Derby and Derbyshire. The identification of the need for and delivery of Early Help is the responsibility of all agencies who work with children and all agencies accept responsibility by signing up to, and actively engaging with this multi-agency approach. Using an Early Help Assessment can make sure that decisions are made at the earliest opportunity to improve the situation for the child and their family.

There are differences between Derby City and Derbyshire County Local Authorities in terms of systems and services for Early Help and on-going developments in both, further guidance is available in the Providing Early Help Procedure.

Remember to refer to the Threshold Document, this shared guidance will help all practitioners working with children, young people, families and carers to provide additional and early help, intensive and specialist support.  At each stage of the process consider if there are any safeguarding concerns and if any are identified follow the safeguarding children procedures.

Early Help Assessments should not be used if you are concerned about child abuse or neglect.

How to complete an Early Help Assessment

Talk to the child and their family, the early help assessment is about working in partnership with families and their involvement is very important.

The Early Help Assessment Guidance and Assessment Tools for use by practitioners when completing an Early Help Assessment can be found in the Documents Library, Guidance Documents and Assessment Tools Sections

• Guidance for completing an Early Help Assessment
• Derby Pre-assessment
• Early Help Assessment
• Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting document ‌

In Derby City if the family has specific complex needs and the whole family require support, you can use the EHA to support a referral to the Priority Families programme.   

Support for completing an Early Help Assessment and Training

If you need advice or support about the early help assessment and work in Derbyshire you can contact your Early Help Adviser or Starting Point.

In Derby you can contact a locality based Early Help Adviser (see below) or phone Children's Services Professional Consultation which offers advice, the opportunity to explore ways of engaging with children and families in early help and whether thresholds for Social Care or MAT services have been met. The service is available between 10am and 4pm on 07812 300329.

The DDSCP training programme includes further details of multi-agency early help training.