Proposals to improve Early Help, Wellbeing and Mental Health Services consultation

Have your say on our proposals to help improve our Early Help, Wellbeing and Mental Health Services in Barnet

Overview

We have been reviewing how we can improve our Early Help, Wellbeing and Mental Health Services in Barnet. Currently these services are provided as two separate services:

• Early Help Services which provides help and support to children, young people and their families from before birth, up to the age of 19 (or 25 if they have special educations needs or a disability).
• Barnet Integrated Clinical Services (BICS) which provides help and support to children, young people and families in the borough with mild to moderate mental health services

To help improve how residents access these services, we have developed a set of proposals that will integrate our Early Help Services and BICS into one service, and we would like to hear your views on our proposals.

What we are proposing

For this new service model we are proposing to:

• continue providing accessible, responsive, highly effective early help, mental health and wellbeing services for children, young people, and families in Barnet
• work in close partnership to enhance and extend mental health and wellbeing support for children, young people, and families in their communities
• create one referral path for Early Help and BICS ensuring that children, young people, and families get the right help at the right time
• for clinical services to work in a fully integrated way with Early Help and wider Family Services partners
• develop a more effective, streamlined service which reduces delays for children, young people, and families getting help and support at the earliest possible time
• eliminate duplication of services
• enhance professional cohesion, communication, and learning.
  
  

Alongside this, we are proposing to create a new Team Around the School (TAS) model. We have been thinking about ways of achieving this and have the following proposals:

• having a link Early Help Hub practitioner and link Early Help Barnet Integrated Clinical Services practitioner working together across groups of schools in Barnet
• feeder primary and receiver secondary schools will share link practitioners, following the journey of the child
• regular sessions at schools which might involve one or more of the following: Consultations, advice, planning, and training for staff, children, young people and families
• supporting coordinated and targeted school-based support with the wider system to address identified areas of local/Borough need and/or initiatives such as the following:
  • resilient schools
  • restorative justice
  • misogyny
  • violence against girls
  • safer schools
  • sexual health
  • exploitation and violence
  • supporting parents
  • providing information, signposting, supporting access to local services
  • supporting referrals to other services, including our Early Help Panel.

How to have your say:

We are keen to hear your views on our proposals and encourage you to have your say. In particular we are keen to hear from young people, parents, carers, teachers, schools and all other interested parties.

You can have you say in the following ways:

• Complete our online questionnaire
• If you would like to request a paper questionnaire or another format, please:

• email EHBICS.Integration@barnet.gov.uk or telephone 020 8359 2034
• write to us at Barnet Family Services, London Borough of Barnet, 2 Bristol Avenue, Colindale, London, NW9 4EW.

• or, if you would like someone to help you complete the questionnaire or need more information, please contact us using one of the above methods.

What happens after the consultation closes?

The council will use the consultation findings to inform our final decision. We will publish the results of the consultation, our decision and how we are acting on the results of the consultation on this web page in November 2024.