Guide to early help and early intervention services

What is early help or early intervention?

Early help, or early intervention, is support given to families when:

a challenge first develops
a new or continuing difficulty doesn’t meet the threshold for specialist support from social services or CAMHS, the NHS mental health service for young people.

Early help aims to support families to develop strategies and strengths, resolve difficulties, and prevent problems from escalating, helping you and your family thrive.

This can go beyond the support offered by universal services such as the GP or school. Teams often include a range of professionals like mental health nurses, health visitors, therapists, psychologists, social workers and family support workers/practitioners. If you’re not sure exactly what someone’s role is, our glossary explains some of them.

Early help might also be provided alongside support from a charity or from CAMHS, or to provide ongoing support after being discharged.

It's often subject to waiting lists, which can vary considerably by area. You can read more about what to do when your child is on a waiting list by visiting our guide.

A child jumping off a wall and her mum is ready to catch her.

What situations is early help available for?

Early help is offered in a wide range of situations in which a child’s health or wellbeing could be affected. (These vary by area – see Early help in your area below.)

You might receive support if your child:

has disabilities, special educational needs, or long-term physical health issues
has mild or emerging mental health difficulties
is being bullied or bullying others
is at risk of exploitation or radicalisation
faces challenges at home, such as difficult relationships, domestic abuse, parental alcohol or drug misuse, parental or sibling mental or physical health problems
is a young carer
is a young parent
is in care or returning home after being in care
is affected by financial or housing problems.

Our early help contact is helping us to get our son’s additional needs met at school. They organise meetings with school and help us hold them accountable. It has been so great to have that support.

What type of support is available through early help?

The support offered by early help can be individual or group-based. It can take place at home, your child's school, a health or children's centre, a mental health hub, or somewhere else.

It can also take many forms. Some examples include:

help accessing and navigating resources such as school or health services
parenting programmes, like managing challenging behaviour
activity groups – for example for parents of younger children, young carers, or other groups
individual mentoring for young people or parents, such as supporting school attendance
specialist help or therapy to develop speech, language, emotional or social skills, or to assist if physical or mental health needs within the family impact children
relationship support, for example to help with parental conflict
support to improve housing or living conditions.

A mother sitting against a wall talking to her children with her arms around them

I attended a three-month parenting course to help with my daughter’s violent behaviours, alongside her CAMHS support. I learned useful tips on parenting challenging behaviour, like to only ‘strike while the iron is cold’.

A parent
The thing I found most valuable from my parenting course has been forming a network with other parents in similar situations. I feel less isolated and have had a lot of help on dealing with school and finding support for myself.

A parent
Early help offered support for siblings caught up in their brother’s behavioural and emotional challenges and helped us put in place a safety plan if we felt the family were at risk of harm.

A parent
My experience of early help was of an individual relationship being formed with the whole family over time, so that they had a good understanding of our family's needs – resulting in effective signposting. The word "advocate" comes to mind.

A parent

How to get early help support: referral and assessment

The first step to getting support is an Early Help Assessment (EHA). This might be suggested by a professional working with your family, such as a teacher, school special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENCO), health visitor or GP. In most areas you can also self-refer directly to your local authority.

As with all elements of early help, an EHA can only ever be done with your consent.

The assessment will be carried out by a professional working with your child or family. They’ll ask you about:

your family and support network
any disabilities, special educational needs or health conditions within the family, and the impact of these on family members
any involvement with other services
the challenges your family is facing and the reasons you want early help
strengths you can build on
the support you feel would be helpful.

Your child might also be involved in the assessment, depending on the situation, their needs, and their age. And you might have a further assessment with a family support worker from the early help team.

Try to give the professionals as much detail as you can so that the right support can be identified.

Early help in your area

Early help provision, referral systems, and waiting lists vary significantly between local authorities and nations of the UK.

Your area might use a Single Point of Access system to process referrals, directing you to the most appropriate service (e.g. early help, social services, or CAMHS). Or it might require direct referral to one specific service.

Information relevant to your area should be available on your local authority website. Just use the name of your local authority and the term ‘early help’ on a search engine.

It might also be listed under your area’s Local Offer (again, search for 'Local Offer' on your local authority website or a search engine). You can also ask your GP surgery or school for contact details and information.

What is an early help plan?

If early help is able to support your needs, a family support worker will consult with you to draw up an early help plan. This will be shared with any professionals working with your family.

This plan is designed to set out objectives, the types of support to be provided, who will provide it, and whether it will be given to your child, you, or others in the family. It should name the professional coordinating the support, who might be referred to as the Lead Professional.

The plan should also outline how and when progress will be reviewed. Reviews may be in the form of a Team Around the Child (TAC) or Team Around the Family (TAF) meeting, which bring together all the professionals working with your child or family in settings such as education and healthcare.

Examples of TAC or TAF attendees include your family support worker, the SENCO, school nurse, education welfare officer or GP.

Regular reviews will allow you and your family support worker to discuss whether objectives have been met and to work out next steps. These could include extending support, ending the plan if needs have been met, or referring on to services such as CAMHS or social services if early help has not adequate.

Again, like all early help support, this will always be voluntary.

Education and health professionals describe working with early help:

We did the EHA with a mum and daughter. Anxiety was affecting the daughter’s mental health and school attendance, and the mum had mental health difficulties. Mum got support through the charity Mind and daughter had behaviour support services and Young Carers counselling, helping her worry less about her mum.

School SENCO and safeguarding lead
A child was badly affected by his brother’s mental health difficulties. The early help parenting team supported the family to manage challenging behaviour and both sons had counselling and behaviour support. This prevented the situation escalating to social care and the family felt part of the process.

School safeguarding lead
We make early help referrals to provide families with additional support. The mental health of a young person having CAMHS treatment may be impacted by issues such as poor housing, family conflict or parental illness. An early help practitioner can visit regularly, helping the family access relevant resources.

Specialist CAMHS Practitioner
A child was having medical problems resulting in poor attendance. The school nurse worked with parents and early help to get the support needed so that medical problems and attendance both improved.

School SENCO

How to find other sources of support

If your family isn't offered early help support, or needs help while on a waiting list, there are other options including:

support at school
voluntary organisations and charities
private counselling and therapy services
online support and apps your child can access directly.

Early help should signpost to suitable support. For more detailed information, including how to find what is offered in your area, see our guide to getting mental health support for your child. You can also read our guide on what to do when your child is on a waiting list, linked above.

Getting support from mental health services

A girl wearing a bright orange jumper in deep conversation

Useful helplines and websites

While we take care to ensure that the organisations we signpost to provide high quality information and advice, we cannot take responsibility for any specific pieces of advice they may offer. We encourage parents and carers to always explore the website of a linked service or organisation to understand who they are and what support they offer before engaging with them.

YoungMinds Parents Helpline

We support parents and carers who are concerned about their child or young person's mental health. Our Parents Helpline provides detailed advice and information, emotional support and signposting.

You can speak to us over the phone or chat to us online.

You can speak to us over webchat between 9.30am and 4pm from Monday-Friday. When we’re closed, you can still leave us a message in the chat. We’ll reply to you by email in 3-5 working days.

Opening times:

9.30am-4pm, Monday-Friday

0808 802 5544

Parents Helpline
Family Line

Provides information and support around family issues, as well as longer-term help through Befrienders and Counsellors.

Opening times:

9am - 9pm, Monday - Friday

0808 802 6666

07537 404 282

familyline@family-action.org.uk

Family Line
Family Lives

Emotional support, information, advice and guidance on any aspect of parenting and family life.

Opening times:

9am - 9pm, Monday to Friday; 10am - 3pm at weekends

0808 800 2222

askus@familylives.org.uk

Family Lives
Citizens Advice

Provides information and advice on issues such as divorce and separation, benefits, work, universal credit, debt, housing and immigration.

Webchat service available.

If you're experiencing problems with debt, you can call their debt helpline or use their debt webchat service.

Opening times:

9am - 5pm, Monday - Friday

0800 144 8848 (England)

0800 702 2020 (Wales)

Citizens Advice
Family Rights Group

Provides support, information and advice to parents whose children are involved with, or in need of, social services because of safety or welfare concerns - as well as parents and relatives of children in the care system.

You can call their helpline or contact them by webchat, which is open 2-4pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Opening times:

9.30am - 3pm, Monday - Friday

Phone: 0808 801 0366

Family Rights Group
NSPCC

Information and advice for any adult concerned about the safety or wellbeing of a child.

Fill out the online contact form.

Opening times:

8am - 10pm, Monday - Friday; 9am - 6pm at weekends

0808 800 5000

help@nspcc.org.uk

NSPCC

Youth Access

Provides information about local counselling and advice services for young people aged 11-25.

Put in your location and what you need help with into their 'Find help' search, and see what services are available in your area.

Youth Access
Hub of Hope

A national database of mental health charities and organisations across Britain that offer mental health advice, including for family members.

Hub of Hope
Bayo

Bayo has a list of organisations that work specifically with Black young people, including places where Black young people can get mental health support in their local community.

Bayo
Barnardo's

Barnardo’s provides a range of services to children, young people and families in UK.

Barnado's

This page was reviewed in July 2025.

It was created with parents and carers with lived experience of supporting their child or young person around early help and intervention.

We will next review the page in 2028.

YoungMinds is a proud member of PIF TICK – the UK's quality mark for trusted health information.

Whether you love the page or think something is missing, we appreciate your feedback. It all helps us to support more young people with their mental health.

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