Early Help For Families 

Our Early Help Offer

Home-Start - help and support for families

Home-Start is a local community network of trained volunteers and expert support helping families with young children through their challenging times. We are there for parents when they need us the most.

Home-Start works with families in homes and communities right across the UK. Starting in the home, our approach is tailored to what the family needs. No judgement, it's just compassionate, confidential help and expert support.

Last year Home-Start supported 76,282 children in 58,849 families, in communities across the UK.

https://www.home-start.org.uk/

One Life Suffolk - wellbeing support

Community Services

This link takes you directly to an NHS web page that provides useful information on the support and well-being support services which are available. Included on the site are links and contact numbers which can be used to find out more about each service. 

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/social-care-and-support-guide/caring-for-children-and-young-people/children-and-young-peoples-services/ 

This link is for the Children's and families page on the Suffolk County Council website, which also has a range of links to helpful services and area of support.

https://www.suffolk.gov.uk/children-families-and-learning 

Lighthouse - support for those living with domestic violence - https://www.lighthousewa.org.uk/

Ten things fact sheets

These wonderful fact sheets give straight forward advice for a range of challenges parents have, such as supporting your child with anxiety, tips to help your child sleep and advice on dealing with challenging behaviour.

Mindfulness

There is a huge amount of research, literature and hype around the benefits of Mindfulness. There are also a lot of misconceptions around  always needing to set aside blocks of time to sit in silence, meditate and 'clear your mind'. Mindfulness can be done by sitting in silence, but also when eating, or walking; it is simply about consciously trying to be present in the moment with awareness  and having choice about our thoughts rather than getting swallowed up in them.

For some interesting insight you could watch THIS conversation with Andy Puddicombe the founder 'Headspace'

For a more medical perspective you can look at the information on the NHS website or research from Harvard

There is also a good summary episode of Dr Rangan Chatterjee's Feel better live more podcast which pulls together several viewpoints on mindfulness HERE

If you are interested in giving mindfulness a go - having guided sessions is great place to start. There are lots to be found on youtube for free. There are also several apps which offer guided sessions - generally some sessions are free but you have to subscribe to access the full package. Fortunately 2 popular apps offer discounts for school staff! Take a look at Calm HERE and Headspace HERE