Your Child's Progress in the Early Years

Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND)

Healthy Child Programme

Health visitors provide this service to everyone who has a child under five years.  Health Visitors will assess your family's strengths and needs, advise on building supportive relationships within the family, provide health education and encourage you to access services and local groups in your community.

The parent-led Ages and Stages Questionnaire is used by Health Visitors as part of the Universal Healthy Child Programme to monitor children’s development. Your family will be offered an assessment at the following stages:

  1. Around 8 weeks to review the health, growth and development of mum and baby
  2. Around 12 months to review your baby’s health, growth and development and plan any future health visits
  3. Around 2 years old to review your child’s health, growth and development and plan future support.

Health Visitors will get other agencies and partners involved when needed, for example if a child has a disability or is finding it harder to reach development goals than other children of the same age. They will help you get the support you need for your individual circumstances.

If your child attends an Early Years Setting

Your Early Years setting will regularly monitor and assess your child’s progress, keeping you informed.

It is important that you and the professionals caring for your child work together. You need to feel comfortable about exchanging information and discussing things that will benefit your child. These conversations will either need to be with your childminder or, in a larger setting like a nursery, with your child’s "key person". This is the person who:

  • Is your main point of contact within the setting
  • Helps your child to become settled, happy and safe
  • Is responsible for your child’s care, development and learning
  • Takes a careful note of your child's progress, sharing this with you and giving you ideas as to how to help your child at home

Try to speak to your child’s key person as often as possible about what your child has been doing, what they have enjoyed, what they need to be doing more of and what you can do at home.

You should be able to get information about your child’s development at any time and there are two stages (at age 2, and again at age 5) when the professionals caring for your child must give you written information about how he or she is doing.

 What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a guide for parents

Where a child has more difficulty learning than others of the same age, or has a disability that makes it harder to benefit from the available facilities, staff should respond by consulting with parent carers, trying new approaches, and developing a written, targeted plan that highlights: 

  • areas in which a child is progressing well
  • areas in which some additional support might be needed
  • focus on any areas wher a child may have a developmental delay, which may indicate a special educational need or disability
  • describe activities and strategies to be used to help support your child's needs, in line with Trafford's Graduated Approach (Parent Carer Guide)

All the information about the child’s learning and development should be taken into consideration , both within and beyond the setting.  The childcare setting should agree with you when to review the plan to see how well it is working. 

They must discuss with you how this plan can be used to support learning at home. 

See more about Helping your child at home in Early Years.

Providers must have your consent to share information with other professionals.

 

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Last updated: 14/08/2023

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