Our Early Support Journey Jane Christofi Children’s Centre & Extended Services Manager

We were frustrated at the lack of families of children with disabilities accessing the Centre despite services to support this group being commissioned for the Centre since early In November 2009 the Centre Manager arranged a meeting with the services commissioned for the centre to discuss how to improve engagement of this target group in the centre. This resulted in an action plan between the service providers and health professionals working in the Centre At this point there was very little change to the amount of children with disabilities accessing the centre.

In January 2010 the Centre was identified as a possible participant in the Early Support pilot programme in Lambeth. The Centre Manager and outreach worker met with Karen Nugent for the first time who introduced the programme. The meeting resulted in us enthusiastically signing up to the programme as we thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to work within a multi agency team to attract more families from this targeted group to the Centre. Early Support programme was included in our School & Centre development plan for 2010/2011. A key development priority for the Centre was to make significant impact on the National indicator NI 92 - % Gap between the lowest achieving 20% in the EYFSP and the rest. Supporting children with disabilities was a big part of this aim. Members of the team including the centre manager, SENCO and outreach worker attended an Early Support re-launch event in March 2010

An Early support Audit tool was completed ; the audit identified where we were currently in promoting inclusion and identified our future plans. At this point we had good links with the multi agency professionals working in the Centre but contact with children with disabilities was still sporadic and inconsistent. We had no access to information in our catchment as to where children with disabilities were living and therefore found it impossible to make any contact.

Parents for Inclusion had set up parents forums but very few parents attended. Contact a Family ran one off special events where new families were introduced to the centre but no sustained contact continued after the event. Together the Centre Team and Karen Nugent came up with an action plan for increasing engagement.

3 families were initially identified for the outreach worker to make contact with in March. 2 children started using the centre (1 with a rare genetic abnormality and the other child had downs syndrome) a 3 rd child recovering from a brain tumour was offered a place in our centre nursery. His place was funded through the 2 yr pilot and his 1-1 support was funded through the vulnerable children’s fund.(March 2010) The SENCO started to work with the family of the child in the nursery to initiate a statement. Statement was awarded in April Early Support resources were ordered from the website and displayed within the centre to encourage families to make use of the resources. (May 2010) An application for a sensory room and resource lending library was submitted in August 2010 to AHDC.

The centre team met with Himali, a Mary Sheridan SALT & Jackie an Early Support key worker to discuss starting a targeted stay and play for children with complex needs. (group starts in September 2010). Training in Early Support was accessed by the Centre Manager and outreach worker. (Sep 2010) to support the families identified within our catchment area. We held a whole Centre inset day to discuss Early Support and strengthening inclusion in the Centre (SEP 2010), the session was delivered by Karen Nugent and her team.

In December 2010, we heard that the Centre was awarded £46,000 to develop the sensory room. This was truly overwhelming and by this stage the Sensory Explorer Group was well established in the centre and they were very excited and joined in developing plans for the room. The room was launched in July 2011 at the Centre’s 5 th birthday party and is now regularly used by families in the catchment area.

The group started in September 2010 and has been regularly supported until this day by the SALT team from Mary Sheridan. Data from Synergy Connect shows that in 2009/10 the centre had contact with 15 children with disabilities and they were contacted 18 times. In 2010/11 we made contact with 23 children with disabilities in our area and they were contacted 179 times. This figure continues to rise in 2011/12! This considerable increase in usage can be attributed to the Early support programme, the state of the art sensory room and the increased confidence of the Centre staff team in supporting children with disabilities.

100% agreed that their children enjoy the sessions, it helps their children learn, the sessions benefit them, the centre staff help my child, the centre is welcoming and someone will help if they need it. Best thing about the group includes: support with feeding, joint sessions have improved my child's ability to eat more complex foods, general advice on feeding, encouragement to join in messy play, interaction with other children, parents, siblings and grandparents all are welcome and encouraged to try new ways of playing, a dedicated group is fantastic, as the group focuses on their needs the progress is seen every week. It is also good to have somewhere to talk with other parents with similar children so we can support each other.

February 2011 met up with the other pilot centres to share success stories and plan for the future. The outreach worker starts key working a family in our catchment (April 2011) Statement process starts (April 2011) for one of our long term sensory explorer users in the hope of getting the statement in place prior to her starting the centre nursery. The statement was awarded and she started nursery aged 2 in September We used the funding to employ her nanny as 1-1 support in order to manage transition from home to nursery as smoothly as possible. 1 day a week she is supported by one of the centre team who knows her from the sensory explorer group. She is going from strength to strength and meeting and exceeding her IEP targets regularly.

4 week Summer play scheme for children with Autism was held in the centre and accessed by 9 children. Took part in the Lets Get Inclusive training programme resulting in 8 staff accessing various training courses to improve inclusion in the centre. Funded a training programme provided by Barnados in the Centre to offer to staff and the community an opportunity to improve their skills in working with children with autism and using PECS. The NI92 is decreasing which is a good sign and has reduced from 41.5% in 2009 to 31.3 % (girls) & 37.5% (boys) in The sensory room is now used regularly by many children in the community

Continue to key work families to enable access to as many universal services as possible. Provide respite care within the centre for 2 hour periods throughout the week. Hold a staff inset re IEP’s and supporting statements. Continue to target families to support our aim to Narrow the Gap!

A special mention needs to be given to Karen Nugent as without her support none of this amazing inclusive practice would have been possible.