Early Support : Improving
services for disabled children and
their families in Wales
What is Early Support?
Mechanism to improve the quality, consistency and
coordination of services for disabled children under the age of
five and their families.
Its role is to:
• Raise expectation about the way
agencies and services work together to
meet the needs of children and families
• Promote the development of key worker
service
• Support training and development of a
multi-agency workforce
• Provide practical resources
• Enable families and practitioners to work
together in partnership.
Early Support principles
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Wherever possible, families are able to live ‘ordinary lives’.
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The uniqueness of children and families is valued and provided for.
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The care that disabled children receive is based on joint assessment,
planning and review processes that keep parents and carers at the heart of
discussion and decision-making about their child.
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Children and families experience service delivery as holistic, co-ordinated
and seamless, facilitated by a key worker where appropriate.
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Families experience continuity of care through different phases of their
engagement with services.
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Children’s learning and development is monitored and promoted.
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Families are able to make informed decisions.
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Families and children are involved in shaping and developing services.
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Working practices and systems are integrated.
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Families can be confident that the people working with them have the
training, skills and experience required to meet their child’s needs
What Early Support
provides
Commitment
Information
Everyone’s
responsibility
Website
Practical guidance
Bilingual materials
Ethos
Partnership
Practical help
Key worker
Bilingual materials
Joint planning
Family-centred
service
delivery
Integrated
working to
improve
services
Training
Integrated
Partnership
Using the
materials
The materials
are not the
intervention
The Family file
Shared information: how services work
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People you may meet
Childcare
Financial help
Social services
Health services
Education
Statutory assessment- Education
Useful contacts and organisations
Shared information: about known
conditions
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Autistic spectrum disorder
Cerebral palsy
Deafness
Down syndrome
Visual impairment
Multi-sensory impairment
Speech and language difficulties
If your child has a rare condition
When your child has no diagnosis
Multiagency Planning and
Improvement Tool
• Supports planning for
implementation of Early Support
• Aids multi-agency review and
planning for service improvement.
• Focuses users on the delivery of
family centred services
• Helps users focus particularly on
services for children under five
and their families but….
• …it can be used as part of a more
general service review and
improvement cycle for children
and young people of all ages.
Early Support’s progress
So far we have ......
• Developed a range of bilingual materials.
• Developed a website –
www.earlysupportwales.org.uk
• Engaged a team of consultants who are
working across Wales
• Developed a training team and started to build
local capacity
• Commissioned CCNUK to develop key worker
training and piloted the training
• Commissioned a range of additional work
projects following three rounds of bids.
• Gathered baseline and one set of follow-up
data for impact analysis
Early Support Consultants
• To support engagement of all
agencies, parents and the voluntary
sector as partners in implementing
Early Support locally.
• To contribute to the development of
local strategies.
• To promote take up of Early Support training.
• To facilitate local awareness raising.
• To provide briefings and planning support for managers
• To support the implementation of Early Support through
the medium of Welsh, where needed.
Early Support & workforce development
• Providing Early Support for children with
additional needs and their families (level 4
accredited course)
• Working in partnership through Early
Support (accredited @ level 5 and nonaccredited)
• Using the Early Support Multiagency
Planning and Improvement Tool (MAPIT)
• Using the Early Support Developmental
Journals (4 courses)
• Early Support parents’ workshops
• Key worker training
Additional resources
We have funded 17 projects across Wales, exploring
different elements of Early Support and how it can
be effectively used and implemented in Wales – eg.
•Autism Cymru Using the Early Support Model in a
school setting
•MYM Inclusion in the Early Years for Children with
additional Needs
•Caerphilly ISCAN
•Gwynedd Delivering Early Support in rural
communities and in Welsh.
•Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire Extending the
web based Individual Development Plan (IDP) to the
Early Years.
•ABMU and LAs key to early years.
Ongoing work
•Rolling out the training
programme and building
capacity
•Developmental journals –
generic and Down
syndrome journals are
ready, the other two are to
follow very soon
• Impact analysis and tracking progress
• Raising awareness and supporting implementation
• Working with statementing reform to ensure Early
Support is part of the new statutory guidance.
Additional materials: future
possibilities
Three new booklets
• Sleep
• Behaviour
• Neurological disorders
New Developmental Journal
focusing on children with
multiple needs.
DVD materials or Easy read
versions
Materials
Copies of all Early Support materials
can be obtained by:Telephone:
0845 6044648
Email:
ESWales@mediascene.co.uk
Website:
www.earlysupportwales.org.uk
Early Support in Wales…contacts
Early Support administrator Marcia Jones
marcia.jones@childreninwales.org.uk
Lead consultant: Kim Bevan
kim@bevanassociates.co.uk
Consortium lead: Lynne Hill
lynne.hill@childreninwales.org.uk