Service Delivery
The Early Years Support Team has been newly formed by amalgamating several discreet strands of Early Years SEN funding in order to provide coherent and inclusive support to young children with special educational needs and their families. We work with our colleagues in Health to promote the earliest possible identification of children with additioanl needs, and then follow this early identification with support to families, early years settings and foundation stage practitioners in schools to help individual children achieve their potential, and settings and schools to improve their capacity to meet a greater diversity of need.
From September 2004 the Early Years Support Team will be working in four geographically associated teams, collaborating closely with other agencies and professionals to provide co-ordinated support for children, families, settings and schools.
Child focused activities:- Home-based teaching programmes for children 0-3 years who have been identified, either shortly after birth or through the Health Promotion Programme as having significant developmental/learning difficulties and whose families would benefit from advice and support to promote early learning.
- Part-time placement at a specialist nursery facility at Parkfield Nursery for children with complex medical, physical or communication difficulties.
- Play-based assessments for children causing concern at Early Years Action and Early Years Action Plus within settings in the private, voluntary and independent sectors or in foundation classes in schools. After assessment strategies that can be incorporated into planning to facilitate the child's progress are discussed with the practitioners responsible for the child, and then reviewed on a regular basis.
- Inclusion support for individual children with high-level needs either for a time-limited period for children at Early Years Action Plus, or as defined through the child's Statement of Special Educational Need.
- Attendance at IEP meetings in schools if this has been prioritised at the Joint Planning Meeting.
- Attendance at Statutory Review Meetings.
- Opportunities to borrow toys or other equipment as appropriate to the difficulties identified.
- Joint work with Speech and Language Therapists and Educational Psychologists to gather evidence to support a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder.
Parent/Carer focused activities- Opportunities and support to participate in a range of family learning activities either in Sure Start Centres or at Parkfield Nursery.
- Opportunities to borrow toys or other equipment as appropriate to the child's needs.
- Access to the National Autistic Society Early Bird Programme for the parents of young children diagnosed as having an autistic spectrum disorder.
Support for settings and the foundation stage classes in schools- Project work in settings in the private, voluntary and independent sectors on language and physical development.
- Consultancy on procedures and resources e.g. screening children on entry to identify those with interaction difficulties, support for spoken language development through the 10 Keys Programme, systems for identifying children with additional difficulties, and delpoyment of human resources to support learning.
- Access to a wide range of SEN training modules that can be accessed at our central training base or in a local or school setting. The Open College Network accredits one of these training courses.
- Joint working with the Speech and Language Therapists on LAST to provide a whole school approach to school-based language projects.
- Production of materials to support planning and learning for children with additional difficulties e.g. "The Next Step", or "We learn to play and work together" (materials to support the successful inclusion of children with social and/or behavioural difficulties)
- School-based training delivered jointly with colleagues on Learning and Autism or Behaviour Support Teams.
