Executive Summary

Peopletoo have been commissioned to undertake a review of Early Help in Brighton and Hove. To inform this review, Family Journey Mapping has been undertaken to gather experiences and insights of families that have received support from Early Help Services (cases were selected from across a range of Early Help Services). From this, key themes have been identified which have fed into the overall findings of the Early Help Review.

Key Themes

· Early Help Services very well thought of by families and all families felt they had improved outcomes as a result of the Early Help Intervention.

· Waiting times for ITF impacted on families and many said they found the wait stressful, with some saying they had hit crisis point and two families felt they would have needed less support had they received support earlier.

· Evidence of whole family working and participants reporting that the intervention had positive impacts on the whole family.

· Long waiting times for CAMHS resulting in escalating needs, and in some cases crisis and additional pressures for families.

· Families report finding the system difficult to navigate and said they did not know where to find support and had often asked for help from many agencies prior to being referred to Early Help.

· Several families said they were worried about the stigma of accessing services, with some even suggesting names of services should be re-considered and venues carefully considered to prevent stigma putting people off.

· Many families found the Early Help Services also helped them in navigating the system to access other support such as Housing, help with benefits, issues with schools. These families expressed that they do not know who to contact other than their Early Help Worker and are worried about support ending and loosing this.

Session 1: ITF Family Coaching (open to Social Work at various points)

Session 2: Parenting Course for mother

Session 3: ITF Family Coach and SEN Support

Session 4: Parenting Course for father

Session 5: Children’s Centre and Primary School Family Coach

Session 6: ITF Family Coaching and Parenting Team

Session 7: ITF Family Coach (open to Social Services at points)

The tables below show all recorded involvements on CareFirst (now Eclipse) for each of the journeys mapped. This is based on the CareFirst number provided and therefore may not show interventions provided to other members of the family.

Session 1:

Team	Start date	End date
Central Area Team Duty	18/02/2008	01/04/2008
Central Area Team Duty	16/03/2009	19/03/2009
Central Area Team Duty	15/06/2009	29/06/2009
Central Area Team Duty	14/04/2010	21/04/2010
Central Area Team Duty	09/07/2010	12/09/2010
Early Help Coordinators	12/10/2020	09/12/2020
Family Information Service	09/10/2020	04/01/2021
Integrated Team For Families - Triage	05/11/2020	09/11/2020
Itf Family Coaching	09/11/2020	27/07/2021
** Obsolete Central Area Team	02/04/2008	21/10/2008
** Obsolete Central Area Team	13/09/2010	14/02/2011
Schools Wellbeing Service	03/11/2020