Early Help Strategy

We are excited to share with you the draft of the Early Help Strategy. In West Sussex, Early Help means the sooner a family receives the right support, the sooner they can improve their situation and prevent the need for prolonged support or escalated intervention.

This Strategy represents a commitment to creating an effective early help system which puts children first. The aim is to achieve this through a whole family approach, ensuring that children's needs and welfare are being met and maintained as well as those of the family. It shows an ambition to bring organisations together to affect change and drive forward better support for children, young people and their families through collaboration and partnership working. This is achieved by working with the family, local communities and others already supporting them.

This Strategy directly links to the main priorities from our West Sussex Council Plan, namely:

• Keeping people safe from vulnerable situations

• A sustainable and prosperous economy

• Helping people and communities to fulfil their potential

• Making the best use of resources

Phase 3 for the Supporting Families programme was implemented in late 2022. This presented an opportunity to refresh and review the partnership approaches and collaboration across the wider early help system. Several partnership engagement events across the county and online were facilitated to share and discuss the new Supporting Families programme vision for a mature early help system. The insights, discussions, and reflective input from partners provided the basis for the direction and content of this Strategy.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on this Strategy. We are now seeking approval from the Children's First Board to publish the final version, which we aim to make available mid-April. A child and family summary version will be made available in due course.

There will be an action plan created following the publishing of the final Strategy, to take forward the key areas of work and ambitious outcomes we are seeking. This will be regularly evaluated to ensure it continues to demonstrate the commitment to making sure children and young people always come first.

This feedback survey closed on 30th March 2023.

Alternative formats and accessibility

If you require any of this information in an alternative format, then please contact us by phone on 01243 777100 or via email at eh.strategy@westsussex.gov.uk and we will assist you. If you are deaf or hard of hearing and have an NGT texting app installed on your computer, laptop or smartphone, you can contact us on 18001 01243 777100.

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