Support for Families
Early Help
Early Help means providing the Right Help at the Right Time to help children and families work through any difficulties they may have in their life.
As a family or young person, there may be times when you need some extra support. If you can, talk to a professional you feel comfortable sharing this information with. It’s really important to talk…
Click on the following links for more information:
Children's Help & Advice Team (CHAT)
If you need any advice to support for your child or your family, we recommend you share your worry with a professional you feel comfortable talking to or call CHAT (Children’s Help and Advice Team within Early Help) if that works better for you and speak to an advisor.
A CHAT advisor can give advice over the phone, send you out information and signposting, or in needed, arrange a package of support through an Early Help Assessment to access a family support worker if required. This could include support from Children’s Centre Services (for families with children aged 5 or under) or Early Help family Support (for families with children 0-18, or up to 25 years with SEND).
- Parenting support
- Bullying
- Family relationships
- Online safety
- Attendance
- Behaviour worries
- Mental health
- Finances and more...
If you would like to seek help, advice and guidance for your family please contact the CHAT team to speak with an experiences CHAT advisor.
01432 260261
Lines are open 9:00am to 4:30pm Monday to Friday.
At Lord Scudamore Academy, we see Mental Health as an absolute priority, and not only for the children within our care. There are a number of useful websites online that are there to support parents, carers and the wider family, as well as children and young people.
Tips for friends and family
A support site and app for young people
A broad range of help and advice resources
Tips for friends and family:
Get support via phone line
Text "SHOUT" to 85258
Local support for adults and yound people
Hereford & Worcestershire support
For 8 year olds plus
Domestic abuse advice and support
A phone line for kids
Keep Active
The current advice is that it’s OK to walk outdoors as long as you stay two metres away from other people. (Going outside doesn’t increase the risk – only being close to other people or touching things they’ve coughed over.) The advice about moving around may change slightly, so keep up to date with the latest guidance from the NHS. If you are lucky enough to have a garden, spend time there, maybe doing some exercise, maybe pulling up some weeds or tidying.
The NHS website has lots of ideas for exercises that need no more equipment than a chair, a pillow or a sofa. Tins of beans could be used as weights.
One of the few forms of exercise that requires almost no space. There are hundreds of free online yoga tutorials on YouTube. Yoga with Adrienne is the most popular series. Cole Chance is also recommended – her workouts, for beginners to more advanced practitioners, take from 10 minutes upwards and target all parts of the body and different times of day and moods.
All you need is some good music. Play your favourite tracks and dance around the house together. It’s such a laugh and will cheer you up no end.
Keep a Routine
Mental health experts agree that it’s important to maintain a routine in the days of isolation, or everything can blur into sameness. Mark out different parts of the day for different activities. Agree a schedule with your kids, so they know when it’s time to do some gaming, when they need to move about, when they need to make food or be helpful, when they need to sleep.
Eat Well & Stay Hydrated
It’s currently difficult to find certain foods in some supermarkets, but there are already lots of ideas online for meals to make with store-cupboard staples. Eat a balanced diet. Get children involved in planning meals and in helping to prepare them. Make sure everyone drinks lots of water, too.
Sleep
This is related to exercise – we all tend to sleep better if we’ve been physically active. So try to fit some exercise into every day. Try some evening yoga to calm you down. And now is definitely the time to enforce a no-screens-before-bed rule.Â
Be Kind to Yourself & Have Fun
- Give yourself treats.
- Pamper yourself.
- Watch a few box sets.
- Read some great books.
- Do some jigsaw puzzles.
- Play some board games.
- Play with your children on their games online. Perhaps you will love too will love Minecraft!
- Make plans with your family for the things you’re going to do when this is all over.
Be Creative
Lose yourselves in creative activities. It doesn’t matter what the end product looks like  – it’s all about the process and maybe learning something new e.g.
- Drawing
- Writing
- Playing music
- Knitting
- Building things out of clean junk
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Use the time you’ve got to learn something new –  perhaps with your children. See the websites under each subject on this page.
Work with your kids on whatever they’re learning – and don’t forget all the useful life-skills that aren’t covered by the curriculum.
Bake and cook together, do some gardening, diy or decorating, learn an instrument or language.
If You're Still Anxious
Try everything above and if none of that works, do something you can control. Write down what you’re worried about – in a diary, say – and put it away.
Practise meditation (lots of courses online) and deep breathing. Focus on helping others.
