Early Help

Local agencies working together to support families.

Early help is our approach to providing support to children, young people and their families as soon as problems emerge or re-emerge.

Early help is available to all families to ensure they have the right support at the right time. 

Early help is a collaborative approach, not a provision, and relies on local agencies working together effectively with families to identify who needs help and then to meet their varied needs. 

Early Help Hubs

The Early Help approach

The Leeds early approach has four key elements:

  • Right conversations, right people, right time - this means talking to families about what support they need. Sometimes the best person to help is someone families already know and this happens quickly so they don’t have to wait. Conversations lead to a meaningful assessment and where appropriate a plan to support the child or young person and their family.
  • The 3As - helping every child and young person to Attend, Attain and Achieve - if children are supported to go to nurseries, schools and college, this will help them to do well, have better health and well-being, and be more likely to get a job when they’re grown up. We want children in Leeds to have friends and hobbies and lots of opportunities to play.
  • Leeds Practice Framework - this helps practitioners to work restoratively with families.
  • Early help is everybody’s business— we will never "do nothing" when families tell us they need help, and we act early before situations or problems become worse. Families can approach anyone working with them who will respond, begin to assess need and start conversations with the right people to identify how help should be provided.

Family Hubs

The Family Hubs are multi-disciplinary teams in the East, West and South of Leeds. The seven hubs are a key part of the Leeds early help offer, with a focus on providing ‘more help’ to families when needed.

The Family Hubs provide advice and support to clusters and partners working in localities to ensure seamless, co-ordinated and effective early help support and a 'getting it right first time’ response.   They deliver direct one to one work to families, as well as a number of evidence based parenting programmes.

Family Help Hubs are based in the Compton Community Hub, Chapeltown Children’s Centre and Deacon Community Hub in the East, Horsforth Community Hub and Armley Community Hub in the West, Dewsbury Road Community Hub and Rothwell Community Hub in the South.   

Contact details: 

Localised cluster support

There are 22 clusters in the city, 21 locality based and 1 SILC Cluster.

Clusters are a partnership with education, health and the Local Authority.

The cluster works closely with universal, targeted and specialist services for children and families in each local area including schools, health services, Area Inclusion Partnerships, Early Start teams in children’s centres, police, social work, the third sector, and other relevant services such as housing.

The core purpose of Clusters is to identify support for those families, children and young people most in need of help and, to ensure they are offered the right intervention at the right time, by the right people.

click here for more information about Cluster support. 

Children's centres

Research shows that children learn more in the first five years of life than at any other time - this is when the foundations of their future learning begin.

A full list of children's centres can be found at: Synergy - Search By Route (leeds.gov.uk)

Contact details