The Continuum of Need

No additional needs identified or limited intervention needed to avoid needs arising.

Children and young people whose needs are met by on-going services such as schools, GP’s, Health Visitors and Dentist alongside the love, care and protection of parents and carers.

Children and young people in this category are making good overall progress in all areas of their development.

Some limited intervention from a universal service may be needed to avoid needs arising or to meet a single identified need. The majority of children living in the UK will fall into this category.

Additional needs:

Children and young people with additional needs (not just SEN), that can be met through a single agency response or through agencies working together to provide a coordinated partnership response.

The support required may only be short term, but if ignored, these issues could lead to escalating.

Multiple and / or  complex needs:

Requiring a multi-agency Early Help response with a lead professional. Level 3 also includes the threshold for a Child in Need.

Although a Child in Need requires a statutory response from Children’s Social Care, a statutory intervention is not necessarily required.

For this reason the threshold for a Child in Need falls in level 3, but where a statutory intervention is required from Children’s Social Care this would fall into level 4.

Children and young people in this category have increasing levels of un-met needs that are more significant and complex. The range, depth or significance of the problems faced by children at level 3 may begin to prevent them from achieving or maintaining a reasonable standard of health or development if they don’t receive appropriate services. They are likely to require targeted and/or longer term intervention from specialist services.

High level of unmet, complex needs and protective factors:

Children and young people in this category are identified as having suffered or likely to be suffering significant harm or significant impairment to their health or development.

Harm is defined under 4 possible categories: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect. These children require intensive support under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (child protection plan).

Sometimes ‘Significant Harm’ will be a single, traumatic event, but more often it is an accumulation of significant events, both acute and longstanding over time, such as in situations of neglect.