What do we do?

The Early Years Inclusion Team

We work to support children 0-5 years old with additional needs and their families in the following ways:

We support children in their homes and in a variety of mainstream settings, private and voluntary nurseries, children’s centres, Foundation Stage 1 and 2 in schools and maintained nurseries.
We offer advice and strategies to settings to support the child’s progress.
We support families and carers.
We provide training and development opportunities for practitioners, sometimes on centrally run courses, sometimes tailored to meet specific needs.
At the end of Foundation Stage, we often pass children’s files to the Learning Support Service ready for Y1.

In order to carry out this support, we offer a range of supportive activities.

Observing children in their nursery and/or at home to identify their needs.
Liaison with other professionals such as Speech and Language Therapists, Physiotherapists, Community Paediatricians, Educational Psychologists, Early Years Foundation Stage Community Teachers, the Ryegate Assessment Team, to provide advice to families and settings.
Liaise with nurseries and schools to suggest strategies and targets to support each child’s progress.
Liaise with families, nurseries and schools to support a smooth transition between home and nursery, between nursery and school and between F2 and Y1.
Teachers make regular contact and may ask assistants to work with children on a weekly basis for a short period.

The Portage Home Visitor's work predominantly with children under 3 who are at home. We offer the following help to parents and carers:

Home visits on a fortnightly basis to parents with pre-school children whose development is delayed.
To talk about the things a child does each day and decide with parents on the skills and play activities they would like to work on.
To help plan how to teach these skills and leave activities for families to practise between visits.
Playgroup sessions at Ryegate once a week so families meet together and children can socialise.

The Centre and the team offer the following help :

The Centre offers one term of specialist intervention to children of nursery age who appear to have a specific language (or speech and language) disorder.
Children attend the Centre for four sessions (two mornings and two afternoons) while continuing to attend their home nursery.
There is a weekly information session for parents.
The ICAN staff also offer outreach work to the home nursery of each child. They lead six language groups based on the needs of the child who is attending the ICAN Centre, but ask nurseries to include some children whose language development is causing concern.
They will give staff informal advice on strategies to use with these children as well as formal targets and advice for the child attending the Centre.
They offer visits to the Centre for staff from a child's home nursery.
The ICAN Team also offer training opportunities, a central course on practical strategies to use with children with specific speech and language impairment, and after school sessions at the Centre with a presentation about the needs of children with specific speech and language impairment and strategies to support children in nursery.
In addition, the Centre Team can also offer settings based training tailored to nurseries' particular needs.

For more information contact the Autism Team.

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