If you or your child have experienced domestic abuse, you can approach a range of organisations for help and advice. This includes Women’s Aid or other specialist domestic violence organisations. See Domestic abuse: getting further help for contact details.
You may need to call the police. Or, depending on your situation, you may want to talk to a practitioner. This may be your GP or health visitor, or your child’s teacher. Or a solicitor. You can also consider contacting your local children’s services department.
Early help aims for agencies to work together to provide support as soon as problems emerge. This is because tackling a problem early can stop things getting worse. Early Help can be given to a family with a child up to age 18. So the child may be a baby, toddler, at primary school or a teenager.
Early Help services are aimed at supporting children and families without a social worker. Social workers are not involved in early help assessments or providing early help services. But sometimes social workers ask early help services to provide assistance to children and families they are working with.
See our Early help page for information about getting early help and what an early help assessment involves.
If you feel it would be helpful for any other practitioners involved with your family to meet together and make a plan, you could suggest that a Team Around the Family meeting.
A range of services can be offered as part of early help. But if the early help assessment suggests your child and family may need extra help and support from children’s services, a referral may be made. See our Child in need page for more information.