Outreach For Local Authorities
Strategic outreach support for local authorities working to keep children safe and families together.
Prevention. Intervention. Training. Assessment. Post-diagnosis support. We work with local authorities to reduce risk, avoid escalation and build sustainable capacity within your workforce and the communities you serve.
Local authorities hold statutory responsibility for the most vulnerable children, young people and families in your area. The pressure is significant rising demand, limited resource and the constant challenge of intervening at the right time.
Our outreach services extend your reach, build workforce capability and provide the specialist mental health, education and neurodevelopmental support that prevents decline and reduces the need for higher-cost intervention. That includes ADHD and Autism assessments and structured post-diagnosis support closing the gap between identification and meaningful help.
Confident practitioners. Better decisions. Better outcomes.
We deliver training for:
- Social work and family support teams
- Education welfare and attendance officers
- Designated safeguarding leads
- Commissioned providers and partners in your supply chain
- Multi-agency teams and early help services
Training areas include:
- Child and adolescent mental health — understanding presentations across different settings
- Anxiety, self-harm and emotional distress — recognition, response and referral
- Understanding ADHD and Autism — what it looks like in different contexts and what it means for the children and families your workforce is supporting
- Post-diagnosis practice — how to work effectively with young people and families following a diagnosis of ADHD or Autism
- SEND and SEMH — understanding need and planning effective support
- Trauma and adversity — building trauma-informed practice across your workforce
- Attendance and emotional barriers to education — a joined-up response
- Family resilience and early help — practical tools for frontline workers
Training is available through short courses, diplomas and apprenticeships as one-off workforce sessions, multi-agency CPD events or as part of a commissioned training programme.
Early. Skilled. Targeted.
Our intervention services include:
- One-to-one mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people
- Family intervention — working with the whole family system, not just the young person
- Baseline assessments — establishing needs, risk and protective factors
- 6–12 week structured programmes — individually tailored, goal-focused and reviewed throughout
- Group intervention — for young people facing similar challenges, in community or educational settings
- ADHD and Autism-informed intervention — for young people with a diagnosis, or where unmet neurodevelopmental need is a factor
- Education-linked intervention — supporting children at risk of exclusion, persistent absence or disengagement
Reducing the burden on families. Reducing the cost to the authority.
Long CAMHS waiting lists, unmet need and undiagnosed neurodevelopmental conditions are a significant driver of escalation in children’s services. Young people with undiagnosed ADHD or Autism are over-represented in exclusion figures, persistent absence data, child protection caseloads and residential placement cohorts.
Our ADHD and Autism assessment service provides timely, high-quality diagnostic assessment for children and young people — accessible through your early help, SEND and children’s services pathways.
We offer:
- Comprehensive ADHD assessments for children and young people across the age range
- Autism assessments — with specific expertise in presentations that are frequently missed, including girls, young people from minority communities, and those with complex trauma histories
- Multi-agency information gathering — working with schools, social workers and carers as part of the assessment process
- Clear, professional reports — suitable for EHCP processes, care proceedings and statutory reviews
- Recommendations for cross-service support planning
Timely diagnosis reduces the cost of misattributed behaviour, failed placements and ineffective provision. It opens the right pathway — earlier.
Post-Diagnosis Support
Diagnosis without support is an incomplete service.
A diagnosis of ADHD or Autism should lead somewhere. For many children, young people and families in your authority — it does not. They receive a report and are returned to a system that has not changed around them. Our post-diagnosis support ensures that the diagnosis becomes the foundation for a genuinely different experience.
We offer:
- Young person support sessions — building self-understanding, self-advocacy and practical strategies
- Family support and psychoeducation — helping parents and carers understand the diagnosis and adjust their approach
- Practitioner briefings — for social workers, key workers and education staff working with the young person
- EHCP and care plan integration support — ensuring the diagnosis is properly reflected in statutory planning
- School and placement transition support — where a diagnosis changes the picture for a young person moving setting
- Ongoing structured post-diagnosis programmes — for young people and families who need more than a one-off session
This service sits naturally within your early help, SEND and children in care pathways — and is available as a commissioned programme or as individual case referrals.
Cost avoidance. Risk reduction. Earlier, better outcomes.
We support local authorities with:
- Community-based prevention programmes for at-risk groups
- School and education-linked early help
- Family early intervention — working with families at the threshold of statutory involvement
- Early neurodevelopmental screening — identifying children who may need assessment before their needs escalate into crisis
- Pathway planning — developing clear prevention-to-intervention-to-assessment journeys
- Population-level needs analysis
- Commissioned programme design
How we work
Cost avoidance
The case for early action.
Every pound invested in prevention saves significantly more in reactive provision. Every diagnosis made at the right time avoids the cost of years of misattributed provision, failed placements and escalating need.
Our outreach services help local authorities to:
- Reduce placement breakdowns through better preparation and in-placement support
- Improve attendance and educational engagement among children in care and on the edge of care
- Decrease demand on specialist CAMHS through structured early intervention and accessible assessment
- Support children to remain in family or community settings wherever it is safe to do so
- Ensure that neurodevelopmental need is identified and responded to — not misread as behaviour
- Evidence the impact of early help and assessment investment through clear, measurable outcome data
Straight forward commissioning
Our services can be commissioned through existing frameworks, individual service agreements or as part of a wider commissioned programme. We work within LA commissioning structures and will ensure our provision fits your systems, your governance and your audit requirements.
Flexible. Tailored. Impactful.
We know no two organisations are the same, and no two young people face the same challenges. That is why everything we offer is designed around your context, your people and your goals.
• Individual or group — we work with young people, families and staff in whatever setting works best
• One-off sessions or structured programmes — from a single assessment to a 6–12 week goal-focused programme
• Baseline and neurodevelopmental assessments — understand where you are starting from before you plan the next step
• Post-diagnosis support — for the young person, their family and the professionals around them
• Bespoke to your journey — whether you are at the beginning of prevention, mid-way through a challenge, or planning for the future
Our team of mental health, education and neurodevelopmental practitioners delivers every service with one question at the centre: how do we make the most positive impact for the young people you serve?
Positive impact
Our team of mental health, education and neurodevelopmental practitioners delivers every service with one question at the centre: how do we make the most positive impact for the young people you serve?
We work with commissioning leads, children’s services managers and education directors to design a programme that fits your priorities and your budget.