Our Family Practitioner Service provides 1:1 support to families facing difficult periods and challenges in their lives.

We work in partnership with families and a range of professionals to provide focused support for the whole family, intervening as early as possible and preventing escalation to more intense and specialist services.

We aim to achieve

• sustained positive change
• stop recurrence of issues
• give families strategies and coping mechanisms to deal with future challenges by themselves.
• create a network of friendship and support around the family to reduce isolation and link families into local services as part of that network.

We enable families to reflect on their challenges, starting with their own perspective, looking at where they want to be, and capturing the voice of the child.

 What does the Family Practitioner Service support with?

• Immediate practical needs linking to local services such as food banks, medical support, providing information and advice about the borough’s services.
• Supports families to access Children and Family Centres and local services, particularly when isolated and/or new to the borough, including health services, SEN support, nursery and school.
• Supports families in navigating systems and services to meet their needs, including support with form filling and online registrations (our centres can provide access to computers if needed)
• Provides regular 1:1 support early to prevent problems escalating to more specialist services.

Professionals

Referrals for our Family Practitioner Service, can be completed online via our professionals referral form or a word copy can be sent to our secure email Lewisham.Secure@eyalliance.org.uk where the EYA Referral Panel will assess the referral and place it within the correct service or programme to meet the family’s needs.

You can also download a copy of our Family Practitioner Service Info Leaflet by clicking on the image on the left.