It's not so much that the helper needs to be called, that only fixes the problem because it contains code to initialize the session.
if you had just added a line to check the session, it would have fixed the issue without needing to include the helper:
<?php
if(!session_id()) session_start();
if(isset($_SESSION['type']) && $_SESSION['type'] != "") {
header("Location: ".$_SESSION['type']."php");
}
?>
9 times out of 10 though, this is done on a page that has security assist access restriction applied to it, so the session check is not needed.