We are thrilled to present the refreshed Early Help Strategy 2025 -2027. This is the third iteration of our strategy and as with the previous strategies there is a strong focus on prevention and supporting children,
young people and families at the very earliest possible moment of them needing support.
 

The early help partnership has grown over the past three years, and we have made excellent progress in delivering a robust Early Help Offer which is built around a solid foundation of our five local family hubs, community partners and other statutory agencies.

The success of our family hub network has brought the borough national recognition with a visit from Lord Michael Farmer co-founder of the national Family hub Network. Therefore, as we move forward with the refreshed Early Help Strategy there will be an even stronger emphasis on providing an Early Help Offer that meets the needs of our most vulnerable children and families as well as a universal offer open to all.
 

We aim to use our resources collectively to help families overcome their challenges and be the best they can be. We want families to be able to build their own resilience through working with us and our principles of taking the right approach, in the right place and at the right time. We want to work with families in a relational way as equal partners and as experts in their own experiences. 

Families within the borough have lots of strengths. We have recognised that families are really resilient and offer each other and themselves a lot of support. By accepting this, we continue to build a system of support and help to work with families rather than trying to see what’s wrong and trying to fix things outside of families.

In the next phase of the strategy, we will build on our offer to families by providing better and easier ways to access services including improving the digital offer to families. We will have a clear and strong focus on making Dudley a child friendly borough and put children and young people at the heart of everything we do.
 

School readiness will continue to be a priority for the partnership as we look to build on our successes in this area. Our strategy will align to Dudley council’s vision to make Dudley borough, amongst the best places in the country to live and work and one that we can all be proud of.
 

The Early Help Strategy describes how we collectively deliver this for our children, young people, and their families. There is still a lot of work to do to achieve our goals, this strategy sets out our ambitious plan to build and develop our Early Help services.

Karen Graham – Acting Director of Children’s Services
Councillor David Stanley - Lead Member for Children’s Services