Council's new early help plan adopts 'critical changes' to help Luton families at crisis point

A new family help strategic plan is to replace the local authority’s current early help strategy, drafted in 2022, according to a report to its executive.

Early help has been provided in Luton since 2014, with the aim that support given to a family when a problem first emerges, explained the report. “It can be provided at any stage in a child or young person’s life by any service or support mechanism before statutory services are required.

“Early help services are delivered to parents, children, or whole families. But the main focus is to improve outcomes for children, build resilience, and prevent the need and reliance on statutory services.

“We made the decision to close our children’s centres in 2021 because of the impact of Covid on council budgets, Our early help service was remodelled to become the family partnership service, which focuses on families requiring targeted support and interventions.

“We’re now actively working to align the new family help service with our family hub, ensuring all families that require support receive it at the right level and time.

“To support these changes, we’ve developed a family help strategic plan. This provides an outline of the family help offer and how it can be accessed.

“Our aim is to encourage family engagement by establishing a service seen as a supportive partner, building strength and resilience into their family’s system to enable them to navigate the challenges they face,” added the report.

“We’re wave two pathfinders for the Families First for Children programme and are testing the roll out of the social care reforms in the north of the town. We’re soon to go live with a second family help team in the south of Luton.”

Labour High Town councillor and portfolio holder for children, health and wellbeing Umme Ali told the committee: “These are critical changes required to reduce the number of children and families we see at the point of crisis.

“The government’s proposed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill underlines the commitment to a family help model,” she said. “It merges our current early help into multi-disciplinary teams designed to provide families in need with better and less stigmatising support, with a view to keeping families together.”

Labour Northwell councillor Rob Roche suggested “resilience is important because that’s something we might be missing” and more of that should be promoted through schools.

Corporate director for children, families and education Dheeraj Chibber replied: “We need a multi-agency and community response from all our partners because we may not necessarily hear about those issues and challenges.

“Our education reset plan is into its second phase examining various strategies to help and support our children. This includes care in the home, challenges in the community and the educational resilience they pick up from school.”

The executive agreed to adopt the new family help strategic plan.