Families First: our support

Families First are a group of people who can support your family during a difficult time. We provide support to your family and work to ensure that all needs are met in a coordinated manner (a Team Around the Family approach), at the right time when your family needs it.

What can we help you with?

There are lots of ways we can support your family. We work with children, young people up to the age of 25, their parents or guardians, and other family members who may be part of the bigger picture.

We can provide confidential support and advice on:

parenting skills, to help you manage your child's or young person's behaviour
relationship problems or family conflict
support and advice for young people aged 11-25
supporting young carers and their families
energy efficiency, and housing and employment rights
helping you to make the most of your money
dealing with loss
Increasing opportunities for disabled children and young people to access activities
play ideas and behaviour management for parents and carers of disabled children and young people
disability training for parents and carers

We do this by:

Listening to your concerns
identifying all of your family's issues and needs
allocating the right people to support you
having a family-led meeting
creating a Family Action Plan
working together to solve the problems

How to get support

If you would like to ask for support from us, you can complete a self-referral form online.

Complete a self-referral form online

If you would like to refer someone else for support, please download a referral form and email it to cfsgateway@denbighshire.gov.uk

Children and families: referral form (MS Word, 683KB)

Alternatively, you can phone us on 01824 712200.

More about Families First

We take an integrated approach to family support, and we focus on:

improving outcomes for the whole family, not just individual family members
tailoring support to the unique circumstances of the individual family
co-ordinating services, so that families get seamless support from the different organisations
seeking early identification and appropriate intervention for families
identifying the needs of local communities, and working with other programmes to deliver appropriate services to fit those needs

Quotes from families who have received support through Families First / Team Around the Family (TAF)

"The help and support my family have received was fantastic. Thank you!"

“TAF have really changed our life for the better. They have taught us that we are strong enough as a family to cope with everyday challenges. Without TAF I don’t know where we would be today. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I really hope that TAF are able to help more families like mine.”

Working with the whole family

The best way of supporting children is by working with the whole family. Evidence suggests that when families get early support, they are less likely to develop more complicated and costly needs.

Families need different support depending on their circumstances. Complicated problems need more intensive support, whereas some families may need help to overcome smaller problems, to stop them escalating.

Supporting a family often involves many different teams and services. We use a joint assessment family framework to ensure that these services work well together, so that the whole family is well supported.

This diagram shows how we co-ordinate the different teams and services working to support a family:

Families First flow-chart (PDF, 325KB)