Early Support
What is Early Support?
Health, social care services and education already work closely together in Haringey but we want to further improve our services to families with children who are
- under 5 and who have complex health needs or a disability
- over 5 who are new to the borough and have a disability
- Over 5 who develop a disability following an accident or illness.
Early Support is a programme designed to bring these services together to offer better co-ordinated, high quality services to families.
Early Support aims to ensure that both parents and professionals are better informed about families’ needs and how best to meet them.
What does Early Support mean for families in Haringey?
Parents will be supported to plan and coordinate services for their child and shape services so that they meet the individual needs of the child and family.
Parents will be required to give permission for information to be shared between the different professionals involved.
What will Early Support provide?
Once a child has been identified as having a complex health need or disability the family and professionals involved will plan together how any assessments will take place and how services will be provided. They will consider what needs to be done immediately but will also start to think about future needs such as pre-school provision and short breaks. A key worker will be allocated to offer individual support to the family through this process.
What is a key worker?
A key worker will provide families with a single point of contact to enable them to have easy access to information, support and services to meet their needs. A key worker may be someone like a Speech and Language therapist, Occupational therapist, or Portage worker.
What does Early Support mean for professionals?
Early Support expects that families will be actively involved with planning services to meet their individual needs. It encourages regular multi-agency planning meetings and reviews with families. These meetings enable families to get together with professionals to discuss their involvement and plan for the future.
The Family Pack
The family pack has been produced for parents to keep all the information they need relating to the care, support and development of their child in one place. The pack includes information about the child’s particular disability, a family service plan to help co-ordinate support for the family as well as details of what to expect from the professionals involved.
You may find the information in the files listed and the external link below helpful.
To find out more about Early Support in Haringey please contact 020 8489 3671.
You can also visit the Council for Disabled Children website (external link) for more on Early Support.
If you would like to find out more about support groups, advice and courses for parents of children with Special Needs and Disabilities please also look at our parenting support information.
