Commended by Ofsted in 2018, Leeds City Council uses the Cluster Collaborative model to offer early help to local families. In Leeds, there are 23 ‘clusters’ which are made up of schools and key partners in small localities. Clusters have combined funding from schools, with additional funding from health services and the local authority, to provide early help services for children aged 4 to 16 who go to one of the schools within the Cluster and have challenges within the remit of early help. Such challenges may be mental health (child or familial), housing related, to do with parental conflict, domestic abuse or substance misuse.
Each individual, multi-agency model is specific to the local needs of the Cluster and combines universal,
targeted and specialist services across schools, health, police, social work, the third sector and housing. The rationale is to identify and provide appropriate support for families early on so that children can do better at school and foster positive relationships with peers and trusted adults, and parents can develop self-efficacy. In turn, it also looks to mitigate statutory involvement and children entering the care system, also leading to cost savings for the council. Children can be referred by their schools, Children’s Services or by local health professionals through a Single Point of Access, or families can self-refer. As part of the intervention, which follows the relationship-based Leeds Practice Principles, each family works on a family plan of goals decided on with a practitioner. Families have a lead worker, who regularly reviews goals in meetings but is also a contact for the family outside weekly meetings. Family plans are also discussed as part of group supervision. The way the support is delivered varies with different therapeutic models and there are six Restorative Early Support Teams in Leeds which can provide more intensive, specialist
support and three Early Help Hubs offering short-term intervention. The Cluster provides support for a
maximum of six months, with weekly meetings, but there are also specific therapy offers for parents and children within this.
A pilot looking at the effectiveness of this model is being funded by the WWC Spark Grant scheme and is due to report imminently.