What is Early Support?
Early Support is a national programme to improve the way that services for young children with disabilities in England work together and with families. It implements Government guidance, Together from the Start, published in 2003.
It provides a standard framework and set of materials that can be used in many different circumstances, and a set of expectations about how services should work with families. Early Support is relevant to all agencies that provide services for families:
- hospital and clinical settings
- Child Development Centres
- mainstream Early Years settings
- Sure Start Children’s Centres
- a range of specialist support agencies, including portage services
- voluntary organisations.
Early Support promotes services for families and children that:
- work in partnership with parents and carers, so that families are held at the heart of discussion and decision-making about their children
- integrate service planning and delivery, particularly when families are in contact with many different people and agencies.
'A major reason for the problems families face with services is the multiplicity of agencies and professionals involved with families of disabled children, the lack of co-ordination between different agencies and the burden on the family in terms of multiple contacts.'
Sloper P et al (1999), Real change, not rhetoric: putting research into practice in multi-agency services
Because families with young children with disabilities are often in contact with many different services provided by different agencies, better multi-agency working is at the heart of the programme.
Early Support is developing at a time of significant change, as part of a broader restructuring of children’s services in England.
The publication of a Government green paper, Every Child Matters, was the starting point for these developments.
This PowerPoint presentation (split into three sections for faster downloading) gives an overview of the programme and its link with wider policy initiatives:
Presentation Part 1 Presentation Part 2 Presentation Part 3
There's more...
... watch a video that sets out what Early Support means for practitioners and families
... find out more about Every Child Matters and the Change for Children programme
... read about the aims of Early Support
... read about the national implementation of Early Support.
