What is early help?

Understand why Early intervention matters for children and families and what can be done to improve access in this animation.

In the UK, a child goes into care every 17 minutes. Many of these children could have stayed with their families - had they got the help they needed before things got really bad. That’s where ‘early help’ comes in.

‘Early help’ is the term we use to describe the range of services that support children and families when a problem first arises.

By tackling issues before they get out of hand, early help can keep children safe from harm and prevent them needing social care.
But early help is under threat. Spending on preventative children’s services has been cut by over a fifth in just five years.
Meanwhile, our system has focused more on helping families once they are already in crisis.

For every two children that get early help, there are three in social care. In effect, we are waiting for children to be harmed before we help them. This is bad for children and families. It costs a lot more to do things this way too.
But we can choose to change this.

We could create a legal duty to provide early help to families, to shield it from cuts. We can introduce a requirement to collect and share data on what services are being provided, and what’s working. And, we can invest in early help services to keep families together and help them thrive.
By giving families help when they first need it, we can help hundreds of thousands more children have safe and happy childhoods.


References:
-Department for Education statistics
-“Too Little, Too Late”. Action for Children, 2022

Find out more: actionforchildren.org.uk/earlyhelp