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Manchester Community Central

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Early Help

In October, Beth Plant, Manager of Policy and Influence at Macc along with Elaine Morrison Head of Commissioning 10-19 years held a Summit for voluntary and community sector groups that worked with children, young people and families came together to discuss Early Help for families, how can voluntary and public sector organisations and communities support children and families to increase resilience and prevent problems escalating?

There were several reasons for this:

• The recent Ofsted Inspection, which found that Manchester’s Children’s Services and Safeguarding Children’s Board were inadequate and highlighted the need to strengthen the work around Early Help in the city
• The current social and economic context - the recession, public spending cuts, voluntary sector cuts and long-standing issues of social and economic deprivation in local communities.
• The reduction in real wages and welfare benefits and the increasing use of sanctions impacting the communities that we work with.
• Public sector and voluntary sector workers are all overstretched trying to tackle increasing demand and need to come together with children, young people and families, to think differently.

Fundamentally, there is overwhelming evidence that the effects of austerity measures, including the welfare reforms, have increased the challenges that all agencies face in providing services to provide positive activities, fun and play, increase wellbeing and resilience, create strong communities and keep vulnerable children and families safe.

This has been the start of a programme of work between the Council and the Voluntary and Community Sector to develop an Early Help Approach in the City.

We have been working to develop a new strategy and set of assessment tools for the city, alongside this we have been working to strengthen partnership working across the city.

Read about the previous summits here:

Find out more about the development of Early Help in the Children Young People and Families  Strategic Updates.

Find out about voluntary sector experience of using the Manchester Common Assessment Framework here