What is Early Help?

Early Help means identifying needs within families early and providing preventive support and intervention before they become difficult to address.

Early Help can be provided at any time in a child’s or young person’s life, pre-birth to adulthood.

Support can be delivered from a wide range of services depending on what is needed; people already working with your family might offer additional help or support so that you can access more specialist or targeted services.

All agencies in Bury who have contact with children and their families can provide help and support; for us to help a Story So Far document would be completed, this is a tool which agencies use to record conversations to help us understand what support you need and enables us to put a plan together to support you.

The Early Help delivery model has been developed through our multiagency Childrens Partnership and came into effect on Monday 7 October 2019.

• The Locality Early Help teams support all 5 neighbourhoods across the borough and are physically based in the Children Centres in Bury, Radcliffe and Whitefield. 
• The teams are working with children and young people, age 0-19, and their families (25 years if SEND)
• The teams are linked to the schools, so that every school in the borough has an Early Help contact
• Similar pathways to support are being developed for pre-school children and post-school
• The Early Help teams link with partner organisations to ensure a joined-up approach
• The Early Help Assessment is called the Story So Far, this replaces the previous Early Help Family Support Plan and is already being successfully used by schools and other agencies

Where additional support is required The Early Help Practitioners will work with a family to understand their needs and create a plan of support to promote positive change. Support ranges from mental health, education concerns, Parenting conflict, healthy relationships and much more

Children's Centres in Bury support children aged zero to five and their parents, carers and childcare providers to help ensure that Bury children are given the best opportunities at their most crucial time for development during the first five years of their lives.

There are five Children’s Centre Hubs and three Children’s Centre Spokes in Bury,

Our services include:

Health Services:

• Pregnant women can receive their ante-natal care from the Ante Natal Clinics in some local Children’s Centres.
• Parents can also get their babies weighed and see the Health Visitor at the Baby Clinics that operate from some Children Centres.
• Parents can get free family vitamins (if they are eligible) from their local Children Centre
• Breast feeding support sessions and groups operate at some of the Children Centres.

Play and Stay Sessions

From March 2022, we are starting up our Play and Stay Sessions within the Children Centres in addition to the Park Sessions which have been running for the past 12 months and by popular demand will continue. In order to find out what is on across Bury each week you can access our Early Help Service Facebook page TOR contact the numbers below to speak to someone about our service

Contact details:

Bury East Locality Team (including Tottington/Ramsbottom)

Telephone Number: 0161 253 5200

Whitefield Locality Team (including Prestwich)

Telephone Number: 0161 253 5077

Radcliffe Locality Team

Telephone Number: 0161 253 7465/7468

Facebook /buryearlyhelp

Bury Children's Partnership | The Bury Directory

Early Help - Bury Council

Early Help is not just a designated team; it is the way that everyone works together to support the needs of families.