Family help
Our Family Help Service has different teams delivering services for families who need help with their younger children, or support with the challenges their teenagers are facing. The teams include family help leads from a range of professional backgrounds, including housing advisors, family support, youth and domestic abuse workers, children and adult practitioners and social workers who work with a family to co-ordinate and provide help on a range of different issues.
They provide a wide range of specialist support for children, young people and their families when they might need more intensive help than can be provided by services in the community, or through our Family Hubs.
We have teams that specialise in providing help to children and teenagers who have additional needs and disabilities. There are also teams who focus on helping families where the parents or carers are struggling with drug or alcohol use and a newborn team that works with vulnerable parents who need help before birth and in the first years of a baby's life.
The Family Help teams work closely with other services in schools, health, housing, benefits, adult social care, community safety and the police.
What will happen if I ask for Family Help services, or request it for someone else?
All requests for Family Help go through the Families First Contact Point (FFCP), where a member of the team will review the information and where possible contact the family to talk through the request. For families who may only need some advice and information, a member of the FFCP team will do this. This could be provided over the phone, online or through visiting the child and family.
If the family look like they might benefit from a Family Help Service the first step is the family will be asked to take part in an assessment, to best understand what’s happening in the children's and family’s life, we also explore who is in the child’s network and is already supporting them, or could support them. If the assessment finds the child is in need of Family Help Services and additional professional services to strengthen the support that is around the children, a family help plan will be put together.
A lead Family Help Practitioner will be assigned to the children to co-ordinate the plan and visit the family to support them. The plan will be regularly reviewed with the family and any other key friends and professionals that are playing an important role, for example, church, school or health visitor.
What if someone is worried about the child’s safety?
If at any point worries about the children’s safety arise, the Family Help Practitioner will consult with a social worker in one of the Multi-Agency Child or Adolescent Protection Teams.
You can also make a referral for child safety via the Families First Contact Point (FFCP) during daytime hours from Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.
Email: mashagency@lewisham.gov.uk or telephone on 0208 314 6660.
If you need to make a referral urgently outside of these hours, the Out of Hours Team operates between 6pm and 8am Monday to Friday and 8am Sat to 8am Monday and can also be contacted on 0208 314 6660. If a child is in imminent danger, contact the police immediately by calling 999.