Following collaborative work with Birmingham’s Early Help Network, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) is delighted to launch an Early Help landing page on Route 2 Wellbeing, the online directory of health and wellbeing services in Birmingham.

Early Help means taking swift action to support children, families and young people who are experiencing challenges, as soon as they emerge. It can be required at any stage in a child’s life from pre-birth to adulthood and applies to any challenge or need that the family cannot deal with or meet on their own.

Early Help is provided to prevent or reduce the need for specialist interventions unless they are absolutely the correct response to meet the need and resolve the challenges and can be provided in the most complex of circumstances as well as the simplest. It means responding promptly if a child is at immediate risk of harm (or has other significant or complex needs) as much as it means responding to a need which only requires advice or guidance.

Birmingham’s Early Help network is comprised of organisations based across the City’s ten constituencies, each bringing knowledge of activity in their area. Staff members at these organisations, known as Community Connectors, have been mapping services that run across Birmingham that can offer Early Help to children, families and young people.

A wide range of new services have now been uploaded onto Route 2 Wellbeing Birmingham and can be accessed from the new Early Help landing page under new categories, as well as additional services to existing categories on the portal.  From this page, members of the public, and any professionals are able to filter services by the type of support offered, as well as by a number of other filters including distance, ethnicity focus, age focus and gender focus. Typing in ‘Early Help’ in the search bar will also bring up a list of services that can be filtered further.

New services continue to be added to the directory, and voluntary sector organisations across the City are also being encouraged to upload and update listings for their own services, so children, families and young people are able to access even more support for whatever issue or problem they may be facing.  Details will be sent to organisations already on the portal to access their details in the next week.

Access Early Help Services