Wakefield Families Together brings services together, to join up how we work, so that it’s easier for Wakefield families to find and access the support you may need, at the earliest opportunity.
Because everyone needs help and support at some point in their life. So, when you do and find it hard to deal with a difficult situation, or have worries around family relationships, behaviour, school attendance, emotional and mental health, domestic abuse, parental conflict, housing issues, or employment and debt problems, Family Hubs can help direct to the right people and services.
We call this ‘early help’.
Early Help Hubs
We want children, young people, and families to tell us they are happy, healthy, and safe. Wakefield Families Together are about working on your behalf so that if you have a concern affecting a child, young person, or family member, you only need to have one conversation with us, and we can direct you to the right support. This might be through your child’s school, in the community, or with a specialist organisation.
Sometimes the concerns you have may need a group of professionals to come together to build a package of support with you and other family members so that we have the right expertise to help the whole family.
To help us localise how we work with families across the Wakefield district, we have grouped our teams and partner organisations into six community ‘cluster areas’.
Netherton J&I School is located within cluster 5 and is linked with Castle Family Hub.
Click on the link below for more information and how to access support. You can also speak to school for more information on how Wakefield Families Together and Castle Family Hub can help and support your family.
https://www.wakefieldfamiliestogether.co.uk/
https://www.wakefieldfamiliestogether.co.uk/family-hubs/
Castle-Whats-On-Guide – Castle Family Hub
The ‘Team Around’ approach
The ‘Team Around’ approach brings together a team of professionals that will work together with you to identify and offer early help and support. In Wakefield within each of our six community cluster areas we have two Team Around offers – the Team Around Early Years (TAEY) and the Team Around the School (TAS).
How does it work?
So when a concern has been raised, either by you as a parent/carer or one of the Team Around professionals, a request for support can be made with your agreement so that a Team Around meeting can take place.
For the TAEY, the request for support would be by a childcare provider or health visitor, and for the TAS, this would be the child’s school.
Your request for support would then be reviewed at one of the regular meetings each ‘Team Around’ has in every cluster area.
This would involve detailed discussion of the concern, and drawing on their joint knowledge and understanding the Team would make a recommendation of the best package of support to offer, by which service.
Sometimes this might mean professionals from other services are invited or consulted, if it is felt they could contribute to a support plan for your child or family.
This support plan would then be fed back to you, and the service who have been identified as responsible for leading on support would get in touch to agree the plan, discuss timescales, and start date.
You can ask for early help from your child’s school, nursery, childminder, or health visitor and request a ‘Team
Around’ meeting. For more information on each of the ‘Team Around’ approaches, you can view the parent and carer leaflets below: