Practitioners

Dear colleague,

Welcome to the first steps website. Here you will find information about our service and what we provide.

Our Vision

To intervene early to make a lasting difference for children and families who need psychological support with emotional, behavioural and social issues.

Our Mission

To provide a local service to families that is flexible and accessible to support the emotional, behavioural, social and psychological development of children.

To deliver an integrated collaborative approach to working with families that creates a seamless service.

To reach parents in need of psychological assistance but who may not have access mainstream services. We aim to reduce the isolation some families feel.

To get effective support to families before their difficulties become crises.

Our Keys to Success

Our team has high levels of psychological skill, creativity, initiative and expertise which we bring to our work with children, young people and families.
We measure our successes and failures; we learn and never stand still.
We get some of our best results through co-working with others, for example North Staffordshire MIND and front line services.
There is a strong evidence base to our work
We make services accessible
We believe that early intervention leads to prevention of more complex problems
We deliver what we say we will and what we deliver is of a high quality
Our service is non-stigmatising and acceptable to children and families
We have successfully worked with the Sure Start model

Our statistics

We receive referrals from a wide range of practitioners from both the statutory and voluntary sector and parents do self refer to the service
The majority of referrals are for behavioural issues
Improving and supporting parents and carers with mental health problems is essential to improving outcomes for their children.
The majority of work is preventive which is in parallel to Government reforms in children’s services
Parents tell us they are seeing lasting changes; we want to further increase the numbers of people who achieve lasting and positive change in their lives.
Presently we are experiencing demand outweighing resource and an increasing pressure to see older children and those outside of our geographical patches.
We provide training and support for professionals from both statutory and voluntary sectors. We provide training direct to parents and carers. In the future we want to further increase the numbers of clients and the training and support we give to other professionals.

Presentation and workshops at conferences and training events have increasingly been requested

Recent events include: