early help

[strawberryvolvic]

My children's school asked if they could refer me to early help. I agreed at the time as I felt kind of like I had no choice. I have since changed my mind, I know it's completely voluntary so how do I back out now? I don't want to tell the school I have changed my mind as I think they will just convince me to go along with it as they can be quite pushy, if early help contact can I just tell them I dont want to proceed?

You can.

There are different levels of intervention.

Section 17 assessment is voluntary - we call this Child In Need Plan.
Section 47 is not - Child Protection Plan.

A Child in Need is different to Early Help though.

All OP has indicated is that she's been referred for Early Help which is different

Different to both of those

No I’ve been referred to mash by the sounds of the letter

Yes as I said in my rather posts MASH is just first point of contact for everything. That then triages out to whatever it's going to triage out to. Standard procedure. In this case Early Help.

Someone from MASH calls you to say for example 'school have referred to us because they say you might benefit from Early Help'. Then they might ask you a couple of questions about the problems. They might tell you a bit more about Early Help for example. Then arrange something from Early Help to see you to discuss more. Or you can tell them you don't want or need this at this point if you want, because they'll tell you it's voluntary.

Even when they come out to have that first discussion with you, you can still say actually I don't want or need this. Cos Early Help is voluntary to help you and your child

I am aware it's different but the conversation went to social services assessments.

OP Early Help is under the same umbrella as Social Care but low level input as others have said. If you don't want them involved, say so.

You are best to just go with it as what will probably happen is early help will come out and do an assessment and this will be pretty much the last you hear from them. I call them “early no help”. If you turn it down it will forever be used against you that you turned down professional support

That’s ok I can’t see a time when that would even come up tbh

Early help is one step down from SS in my area but yes it's the same department under a different name. We too had early help when my eldest school refused. The max time they can work you is very short. They, in my case, made no difference. Felt nice as a pp said that they came to meetings but it was more like a tight touch counciling service for me and they said ds wouldn't engage with them so they accepted that at face value, didn't much effort to build a repor with dc, nothing changed and they buggered off. It was maybe someone else ticking a box to back up i couldn't do more.

School attendance can look like neglect which is child protection. I didn't fear them. I was wasnt neglecting him.

HI OP,

I've been down this route three times when I really didn't want it. Eventually I called their bluff and said I would like help. They said "oh sorry, there's nothing we can do for you" and I was discharged.

So from my experience, it actuallys saves a lot of time and angst if you just accept help, and then they rapidly evaporate.

Generally speaking the more polite and grateful and friendly you are, the quicker they vanish, I find.

Yes you can. Unless it is safeguarding.

Probably simplest way is thinking of tiers
Tier 1 - generic support accessible by all
Tier 2 - early help
Tier 3 - child in need (I'm in Wales and this us called child in need of care and support)
Tier 4 - child protection.

I think MASH's title of 'multi agency safeguarding hub' projects a message it is just safeguarding or SS level when it isn't. It is purely a multi agency central referral point.

The bottom line is - you can decline, school will be told (if they made the referral), it will reflect poorly on your parenting that you declined.

We accepted early help. The lady was nice and kids liked her, but we received no help and were quickly discharged. I can't honestly see what the point was, or why money is being wasted on not helping people.

But when we went to a meeting with the school and early help about the ehcp applications, someone had drawn up the document saying parents not engaging with early help! Why on earth the child should be punished for a parent not engaging I don't know, but it would definitely have been used against us if it was true.

Op I remember your thread a few days ago, I am aware you are having some issues with both children is that right? Why do you not want to see if they can help you with this?

Why on earth the child should be punished for a parent not engaging I don't know

Because EH is about helping the child. What kind of parent do you think of when a parent infers "no, I do not want you to help my child"?

Some parents go so far as inferring "I don't even want you to look into what help my child could have" (this is an Early Help Assessment).

The likelihood of a referral that you couldn't decline leaving your waiting 48hours for an outcome, is unheard of.

So when the MASH colleague does call and get in touch, you would be able to refuse the support offered. As if it was a child protection concern, they wouldn't have sat on it for 48hours.

However, if the school are thinking you / your children would benefit from support. Is this going to get better without anyone helping you?

I'm not sure if that's true in England. All of my kids are CIN because of disabled sibling. There's zero child protection issues. Sibling is under named social worker via children with disabilities team as a disabled child for 7 years. Never ever had a child protection case open for him. So three kids CIN and no child protection.

She's saying child protection is a different stage to child in need. Just because you've got a Child in Need doesn't mean there's a child protection issue

The best thing you can do is to go along with it.

The reality is, there are so few resources that you will receive practically nothing. But on paper, it looks like you are engaging with services in the best interests of your child/children.

By refusing, services will say you are preventing the child from receiving help.

Ok I read that as CIN is the step before child protection. It's not in my case.

Yes exactly tier 3 is SS involvement as is tier 4. So child in need has to be SS involvement as per definition of section 17 of the Children Act.

Tier 4 is child protection as defined under section 47 of the Children Act.

I was trying to help OP see where different services and involvement of SS sits.

As you have rightly said Children with a disability by definition of being Children in need sit at tier 3.

Never really understand to point of CIN. Its not on kids school files and my sons disability SW never meets them or asks after them. They wouldn't even know what or where my 17 is studying / doing. The named SW is only for disabled child and they only deal with him ( if that. They haven't seen him for 9 months and me for ten). It will be coming up for a year they haven't stepped foot in my house.

Who I forms school a child is CIN? It's just a tick box really.

Yes I understand. It's often because some LAs will say if 1 child is CIN all should be open but if there's no plan or reviews I'd argue they don't need to be CiN...unless they're classed as young carers.
At 17 your child could request to not be CiN.

Yes they are young carers. But I need to re register them every so often or that also stops. That's relatively new as a cost cutting thing. School not interested in young carer status as it cames via me and they don't tend to take much atention to parents word. Everything is proof led.

As not to derail, in my area this is the crux of socail services at any level. There's nothing much they have to offer. It's a box to tick and shows your engaging ie it's not you. I'm probably in a different boat as my kids have SEN. But I find the most common push back is "your the problem" as a parent of a SEN child. So I never give anyone any ammunition. 'You don't engage, support, work with us' is something I can and have and said 'please explain how? That's a strong statement so please explain so I can do better'. They then can't and have to apologise.

Bottom line is nothing to hide is nothing to worry about ( but I know its scary, I really do as someone who was repeatedly being threatened with fines for attendance).

There is so little money to do anything.