Nottinghamshire Common Assessment Framework Handbook

1.8
What do we mean by Early Intervention?
Figure 2: the Nottinghamshire Continuum of Children and Young People’s Needs
This model is used to illustrate the different levels of need of children and young
people in Nottinghamshire rather than numbers of children and young people at
each level. It recognises that children, young people and their families will have
different levels of needs, and that a family’s needs may change over time.
Early intervention means providing support to children and young people as soon as
we realise they are experiencing difficulties. It means intervening early before situations
reach crisis level, and making sure that we work in a coordinated way as soon as we
realise that a child has additional needs. Using the Pathway to Provision indicators of
need can help to identify if a child has additional needs. If a child is not making the
progress we would expect for his/her age, then early intervention and targeted support
services may need to provide additional services. If a child has needs that relate to
several services, then those services need to work together effectively.
Early intervention work can be with children of any age. Intervention in the early years
of children’s lives can be very effective as we support families as soon as they encounter
problems. However, children of all ages may experience difficulties and need additional
support. For most early intervention work we need the consent of the young person or
family. We are offering our help, but families choose if they want to accept it.
For children with more complex needs, we are likely to be already providing multi-agency
support. We need to continue to support these children, but early intervention means
reaching more children at an earlier stage – and working together to help families resolve
their problems as soon as possible.
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