‘Early Help’ is an important opt-in service for families, seeking to meet their needs for support in resolving difficulties and prevent these from developing to the threshold for intervention from Social Services.

Given the value to improving outcomes by preventing problems escalating, Liverpool City Council wants to ensure that families who are identified as in need of Early Help and offered the service accept the offer of support.

Behavioural insight work was commissioned to understand the barriers, facilitators, and motivators to accepting assistance from Early Help support services. We explored assumptions, expectations and attitudes of those in the target audience, as well as current interfaces and interventions to initiate referrals and communications around the service. Investigation and analysis took into account the COM-B model to map the audience landscape and identify key sticking points and opportunities.

As well as providing an understanding of the audience, we were able to highlight specific opportunities for development in reaching the audience and communicating the service.