The aim of early help in Medway is to ensure that children and families that need extra help have one lead person who they can tell their story to. This means you will not have to keep telling different people.

This lead person will carry out a family assessment to develop a plan of action and interventions needed to meet the aims of your family.

Our Early Help Strategy

Our Early Help Strategy is available at Medway Children's Safeguarding Partnership (MSCP).

Around 20% of young people and their families are likely to need some extra support at some point. Our strategy aims to:

  • offer support to reduce the likelihood of family issues getting worse
  • reduce the higher costs that occur with late intervention
  • make a difference to children’s lives and help them to follow the path they want
  • ensure that families don’t have to wait too long to get support
  • make sure that families are not left up in the air when the support ends.

Early Help Outcomes Plan

The Medway Early Help Outcomes Plan has been developed in response to Supporting Families Programme for England.

Phase 1 of the programme was designed to focus on families:

  • with children that were not going to school
  • with young people committing crime
  • involved with anti-social behaviour
  • with adults out of work.

Phase 2 of the programme aimed to reach another 400,000 families by 2020 across England and includes families:

  • that have been affected by domestic violence and abuse
  • with children that need help
  • with parents or children that have a range of health needs.

Phase 3 was launched in 2021 and Supporting Families relaunched in April 2021. It builds on the Supporting Families 2021 to 2022 and beyond. 

It's focused on:

  • building resilience for vulnerable families
  • driving change so areas are joined up
  • efficient local services that can identify families in need, providing the right support at the right time.

About the Supporting Families programme

Supporting Families programme aims to build on the success and find ways to support families in need. Especially as they recover from the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19) and also considering the governments commitment to leveling up. 

The new outcomes framework includes 10 headline outcomes instead of 6. This allows for:

  • more detailed reporting on the problems families are facing
  • clarifying what good looks like for these outcomes
  • clarity about the levels of evidence that would be expected when measuring these outcomes. 

This plan sets out an agreed approach as to how Medway will:

  • identify families that need support
  • support those families to a successful outcome
  • monitor and progress at key points
  • provide evidence of significant and continued success
  • make change within local agencies to continue this work after 2020.

Download our Early Help Outcome Plan.