The Early Intervention and Youth Support Service
Support for Professionals
Professionals can access a wide range of support and services through the Early Intervention and Youth Services Team.
Any professional across the county who has identified a child, young person or family who are struggling to manage and need support that cannot be offered through universal services can refer to this service/ team. To refer a child, young person or family, you need to complete an online referral form (ensuring you have the consent of the parent or carer to request the help and check they are ok to share their information with us). The referral form can be found at here
After submission, the referral is sent via a link to a secure referral management system. All referrals are triaged for suitability by Senior Practitioners within the Early Intervention and Youth Service. Referrals where we think support could be offered to the family are assigned to a Family Support Practitioner who will then contact the named person on the referral. Initially they will introduce themselves, ensuring the family still want support and will then arrange a time to meet. This can be either face to face or virtually. The practitioner will discuss with the family what hep and support they think they require in order to help improve their situation. The Family Support Practitioner will work to the individual family’s agenda and, where appropriate, will meet with all family members. The Family Support Practitioner will get the views of everyone about the situation and will tailor support to the individual. This is a person-centred approach and the Practitioner works to the Signs of Safety model of support
Our referral process
Our referral criteria is that we work with families, Children and Young People whose needs are identified as being at TIER 2 on the continuum of need.
TIER 2 is defined as: “These children/families may require extra support in order to promote their safety and happiness and to explore the support of family and services to maintain safety in the community. The nature of need may be short term or more moderate in nature.”
We will not work with families who have entrenched multi-generational problems.
We will not work with families who do not consent to our support.
We will not work with families who have had extensive or complex Social Care needs.
We will not work with families who are already open to Social Care or Tier 3 Targeted Services
The Senior Practitioner team are very experienced at looking at the information on the referral and making sure we can offer the right support at the right time.
There are some situations where a referral may not be suitable to receive support from the Early Intervention and Youth Service. This can be for a number of reasons. A Senior Practitioner will contact the referrer to explain the reasons why they are not able to offer services or support at this time. The Senior Practitioners will offer advice and guidance on possible options for the referrer to access the most appropriate support for the family and will work through the Thresholds and Pathways criteria to help work out the best support route for the family.
What happens to referrals that is not suitable?
The referral is archived from the Referral Management System
Details of how personal data is handled, can be found here
For more information about our commitment to Safeguarding please click here
Group Work sessions for schools
The Early Intervention and Youth work team are also able to offer free group work sessions for schools. These take place within the school setting over a 4-12week period. The sessions will include hands-on practical learning lead by two of our expert practitioners.
The team can offer two packages:
- Package 1 – knowing the risks
This is an 8-12 programme that can cover a wide range of topics from Knife Crime to Sexual Health
- Package 2 – Targeted group work
This is a bespoke package that is tailored to the current needs of the young people or arising issues in the local community. The group will be targeted, needs based and covered over a shorter period of time than package 1.
Each group for these sessions would need to have between 6 and 12 participants aged 10-18years.
For more information or if you have any questions about the sessions please email us earlyinterventionteam@northantspfcc.gov.uk
(please mention the ‘Group Work Sessions’ in your subject box)
Other opportunities:
