Our Early Help Offer

Marlborough St. Mary’s Primary School Early Help Offer

Marlborough St. Mary’s Primary School is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

We endeavour to create a school ethos that promotes trust between all adults and children, so that all children know who they are able to talk to if they have any concerns or worries.

Early Help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life. Providing Early Help to our children and families at Marlborough St. Mary’s Primary School means we can be prompt and more effective in promoting support and meeting the needs of our children and their families.

At Marlborough St. Mary’s, we believe that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, but we also have members of school community who have particular responsibilities for leading safeguarding in our school. Mr. Russell Goodman (Deputy Headteacher) is our Designated Safeguarding Lead. Mr. Dan Crossman (Head teacher), Mrs. Kath More (Pastoral Support), Mrs. Lisa Mulingani (Parent Support Advisor) and Mrs. Laura Venn (SENDCO) are all Deputy Designated Safeguarding leads. The Governor with responsibility for safeguarding is Mrs. Katie Riches. All staff receive annual safeguard training through the DSL, as well as regular updates through continuous professional development. Any new staff receive full safeguarding training as part of their induction to the school, again delivered by the DSL

Our Safeguarding Team

The diagram below shows how family situations and professional responses differ across a range of levels. We use this graduated approach to make sure we can provide the best support for different families’ individual situations.

Support can be offered under an ‘Early Help’ service when families are in need of some additional support to manage the demands of family life, and can either be offered just by school staff, or by school staff and staff from other agencies such as health visitors, speech and language therapists, play therapists, CAMHS, educational psychologists or family keyworkers.

Support under an Early Help remit is offered and accepted on a voluntary basis, with the aim being to work with families to improve their situation. We hope that by offering support early, when problems are emerging, or beginning to have a negative impact on families ability to cope, these problems will be easier to address with short-term involvement from services. The aim is for families to move down the triangle and return to the green segment of ‘coping with life’ and not requiring any additional support.

In Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024 it makes it clear that ALL staff should be aware of their local Early help process and understand their role in it. This statutory document makes it clear that any child may benefit from Early Help, but all school and college staff should be particularly alert to the potential need for Early Help for a child who:

Has a disability and / or has specific additional needs;
Has special educational needs (whether or not they have a statutory education, health care plan);
Is a young carer;
Is showing signs of being drawn into antisocial or criminal behaviour, including gang involvement and association with organised crime groups;
Is frequently missing/goes missing from care or from home;
Is misusing drugs or alcohol themselves;
Is at risk of modern slavery, trafficking or exploitation;
Is in a family circumstance which presents challenges for the child; such as adult or older sibling substance abuse, adult mental health problems or domestic abuse;
Has returned home to their family from care;
Is showing early signs of abuse and/or neglect;
Is at risk of being radicalised or exploited;
Is a privately fostered child (living with someone who is not a close relative under a family arrangement, expected to last for more than 28 days)

To assist staff in being alert to children’s needs, they are expected to undertake the following training.

Prevent Training: All member of the teaching and teaching support staff receive the PREVENT training, ensuring they are all able to identify the early stages of radicalisation and what to do. This is part of the induction process for new staff. Information on Prevent is disseminated to ALL staff.
Child Criminal Exploitation: All staff have been trained through the whole school safeguarding training delivered annually, and are able to identify early indicators of potential cases of child criminal exploitation.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): All staff receive annual training on FGM. Staff know how to identify if a child may be at risk. They are aware of the countries and places within this country where children may be taken to for this to happen. They know the signs to look for and most importantly how to refer, following the school's safeguarding procedures.

Marlborough St. Mary’s Early Help Offer:

Within school we provide the following Early Help support for all children, striving to ensure concerns, no matter how small, are listened to and supported effectively, maximising the chances of effectively safeguarding all of our children.

How we identify if a child or family is in need of Early Help

At Marlborough St. Mary’s we view behaviour as a form of communication. Often this behavioural communication is telling us that the child has an unmet need.

Staff may become aware of unmet needs in a number of ways; noticing signs that are being communicated through children’s behaviour, listening to what children are telling staff about their lives, or through conversations with parents or carers. As a minimum, staff record this information on CPOMS and it is read and acknowledged by a DDSL or the DSL. If staff have concerns about children’s unmet needs that they wish to discuss more urgently, there will always be at least one member of the safeguarding team in school at any time.

We have a live, in-house “Children with unmet needs” document which tracks the development and progress of children who we believe may have unmet needs. We monitor and discuss the needs of these children during weekly meetings of the in-house safeguarding team (DSL and DDSLs) and then decide which of the below options might be most appropriate to offer to the child and their family. All offers of support are discussed with parents.

Marlborough St. Mary’s Early Help Offer:

How we identify if a child or family is in need of Early Help

At Marlborough St. Mary’s we view behaviour as a form of communication. Often this behavioural communication is telling us that the child has an unmet need.

Offers of Early Help at Marlborough St. Mary’s

Universal Support offered to children within school

Five to Thrive School:

Marlborough St. Mary’s is a Five To Thrive flagship school and our behaviour policy is closely aligned with the Five to Thrive approach. All staff have undertaken the Five to Thrive Training and can refresh their knowledge through online resources at anytime.

PSHE and Relationships and Sex Education Programme: Our school delivers Personal, Social, Health and Economics, (PSHE) and Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) programmes through JIGSAW. This programme supports the children’s understanding of how to keep themselves safe. It also broadens their understanding of strategies to develop their resilience, as well as their awareness of their mental health and approaches to keep this aspect of their lives healthy.
Online safety: Project Evolve: Each year group is taught 6 units of online safety lessons throughout the year, linking directly with areas of computing they are working on.

Extra-Curricular Clubs: Extra-curricular clubs are offered to all children to encourage a healthy lifestyle, relationship building, physical activity and sports, social development skills and enhancement of the curriculum.
Regulation Stations: Every classroom has an area outside where children can be helped to regulate when they are struggling.
Sensory Circuits: Laura Stewart has designed a sensory circuit to meet a range of needs of children within the school. This is accessible to all children and is housed within its own room.
Woody: Our school dog Woody provides support when children are struggling. This may be helping when they are dysregulated or children spending time with Woody as part of their “brain breaks”.

Early Help Support offered within school to children and / or parents

Family Support Worker: Lisa Mulingani is our school Family Support Worker . Lisa is able to offer targeted support to parents and carers, addressing a variety of concerns or difficulties. Support can be provided through face-to-face meetings, over the telephone and even via email – whatever method suits a parents’ circumstances best. Lisa holds a weekly drop-in session for all parents, where no appointment is needed. Lisa can be contacted through the school office or ClassDojo .

Willow Room : We know that any child can struggle in school at times and there are a variety of reasons that this may be the case. We have a dedicated room in the school where children can go for support. The is staffed full time by Sara Clark, a teaching assistant with wealth of expereince of working with both mainstream children and those with SEND. Sara offers a range of services from helping a child to re-regulate through to working to build their emotional resiliance.

Mindfulness Workshops – Weekly Workshops are held every week. Teachers identify children who would benefit, and discuss this with parents before the workshops are offered to children.
Emotional Literacy Support Assistants: Sometimes, a child may need targeted emotional support. This is provided through our ELSA programme. The programme is designed to offer short-term support in the school day for those children who need it. It is run by our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead, Kath More.
Forest School groups – These groups are run by our forest school specialist, Ed O’Reilly. Mr. O’Reilly takes small groups of children out weekly to work on specific life skills.
Play Therapist: Tajwar Hassan is in school one day a week, working with individual children identified as needing a high level of support, running a programme which is personalised to meet the need of the individual child. This programme continues until significant progress has been made or other resources have been provided as appropriate.
In House SEND support: We have 3 members of staff who share responsibility for SEND at Marlborough St. Mary’. Laura Venn works full time to offer support to children with SEND both in the Mainstream and Resource Base settings. Laura Stewart spends a day a week dedicated to offering practical support to teachers and teaching assistants working with any children with SEND. Lisa Penfold has a wealth of knowledge of the Resource base and offers support to the staff within the resource bases.
Speech and Language Support: We recognise that communication is both a vital and complex skill that develops gradually over time from the moment a child is born. It is important that children develop a firm foundation of earlier skills such as listening and playing so that they can successfully develop later skills such as using tricky sounds and spelling. At Marlborough St. Mary’s, we have employed a private Speech and Language therapist who works with both children and staff on a weekly basis.
Educational Psychologist: Caro Strover is in school on a regular basis, offering a clinic to teachers. She uses her knowledge of child development to offer recommendations and support.
School Nurse: We work closely with our school nurse, who is able to provide advice and guidance to parents on a variety of health and wellbeing issues. She visits school regularly to meet with the DSL and meets with parents, carers and children as and when required.
Attendance support: Every child whose attendance is below 90% are carefully monitored and support will be offered, utilising the skills of the Family Support Worker where appropriate. Our school operates a first day response system meaning that parents will be contacted on the phone by a member of staff if their child is not in school. Formal attendance meetings are held with parents, plans put in place and reviewed, with improvements recognised. Where attendance does not improve, the support of the Education Welfare Service might be sought in order to further assist our families.

Early Help Support offered by agencies, facilitated through MSM

CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service): We recognise that sometimes, a child needs more intensive mental health support than can be offered within school. In these situations, we offer to help parents make a referral to CAMHS and then support parents in accessing a service from CAMHS.
Links with our Community Social Workers and other support agencies including the Educational Health services: In addition to the above professionals, we have a close working relationship with Children’s services. A senior social worker works from the school once a fortnight where she offers a clinic for the safeguarding team to discuss situations which are challenging the school’s resources or where there seems to be little positive change.
We also liaise with other agencies and people within the local community as indicated by the needs of the child and family.

Please see below a comprehensive list of support available to families from outside agencies.

Support available to families from outside agencies