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<p>This government recognises the importance of providing early and timely help for
children to support them to achieve their full potential at school so that they can
thrive in adulthood.</p><p>At the last spending review, the department announced over
£1 billion toward programmes to improve early help services from birth to adulthood,
including delivering on Family Hubs and helping families facing multiple disadvantage
through the Supporting Families and Holiday Activities and Food programmes.</p><p>The
department’s statutory guidance, titled ‘Working together to safeguard children’,
which was updated in 2023, confirms the expectation that local areas should have a
range of evidence-based services available to provide early support for children and
families who need it.</p><p>In ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department announced
plans to build on the strengths of early help services through the implementation
of Family Help. In the Families First for Children Pathfinder, the department is investigating
how multi-disciplinary family help teams can provide targeted support to help children
and families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity.</p><p>The department
is spending more on children’s mental health services than ever before and working
across government to ensure partnerships working across different sectors are delivering
for children who need support.</p><p>The department is also continuing to roll out
Mental Health Support Teams in education settings and supporting schools and colleges
to train senior mental health leads, ensuring that as many young people as possible
have access to the support they need.</p><p>Up to an additional £2.3 billion of additional
funding a year since 2018/19 has been allocated to expand and transform mental health
services. This is with the aim that 345,000 more children and young people will have
been able to access NHS-funded mental health support by March 2024.</p><p>The department
is making the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance statutory from
September 2024. This sets out how schools, local authorities and other services need
to work together to support pupils at risk of poor attendance and how support provided
to these families is consistent across the country.</p><p>The department’s package
of wide-ranging reforms designed to support schools to improve attendance means there
were 440,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending in 2022/23 compared
to 2021/22.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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