Learning Plan For Children 's Needs

A practitioner’s role in meeting children’s learning needs are to understand and work with each and every child’s learning needs. They can do this by providing different opportunities to individual children because each child is unique and learns differently. The practitioners’ role would therefore be to plan and resource an environment that is challenging and helps children learn in many different areas of their learning.

When looking at children and young people’s development it is important to recognise and respond to concerns to ensure that the child or young person receives the help and assistance needed.

Multi agency teams such as a teacher, speech and language therapist and SENCO work together to support children that have speech, language and communication needs. If a parent is worried about their child’s speech, language or communication, they may visit their GP or a health visitor. The health visitor would identify problems when a child is taken for check ups. For some children if their communication difficulties are linked to other learning difficulties then it can resort to them being assessed by an educational psychologist. Once a delay in the child's development has been recognized the child would then be referred an appropriate specialist service e.g. to a speech and language therapist. It is vital that every educational provision

A child will be assessed by an educational psychologist if there are concerns about their intellectual, communication and behavioural development. Assessments can be arranged by the SENCO or independently. The aim of the assessments is to find out why the child is not progressing and what support is needed in order for them to progress. Specific learning difficulties are often identified in this way such as Dyslexia, AHAD, Dyspraxia. Support and targets for the child are then set to help them achieve. The outcome of the assessments may involve the child referred to other professionals e.g. occupational therapist, optometrist, speech and language therapist, psychiatrist. The psychologist will advise the school on how to promote development for example, keeping verbal instructions simple. Keep stories and group activities short to match attention span.

Practitioner’s expectations should be to become a valuable practitioner, to be reliable and build good relationships with children and parent carers, encouraging play whilst learning, and by having children’s best interests e.g. physical activities, outings, this would help them to enjoy their growth in knowledge and assist in enhancing their development as a whole. Also practitioners should work as a team with other staff members and parent/carers in order to support the children to promote the children’s initial learning so that the children will feel confident and would be able boost up their self-esteem, and this will also help them in their future, and prepare them in further education when they move onto school. Also the

A/c 1.2 The benefit of using a child centred model of assessment and planning is that you concentrate on the person and their specific and individual set of needs and circumstances. A child centred model promotes the rights of the child and allows them to communicate and say what they want for themselves. When children are moved to make the correct choice and take a lead using this type of assessment they tend to succeed as they develop their needs. Children and young people’s needs can be identified through observation and the sharing of information between those that are involved in the care of the young people or children. The parents and class teachers are the best places to identify individual needs because the young people spend more time at school and home than they do anywhere else. School/ home visits, review meetings, hospital consultations are some of the

1. Setting the standards for the learning, development and care, ensuring that every child makes progress and that no child gets left behind. Parents, providers should deliver individualised learning, development and care that enhances the development of the children in their care and gives those children the best possible start in life. Every child should be supported individually to make progress at their own pace and children who need extra support to fulfil their potential should receive special consideration. All providers have an equally important role to play in children’s early years experiences and they have to ensure that the provision they deliver is both appropriate to children’ needs and complementary to the education and care provided in child’s other settings.

Working within this approach can also avoid confusion between practitioners or provision being duplicated or missed out and parents being asked the same questions over and over which could get irritating for the parents. Sharing information gives an overall better service provided. The SEN code of practice 2001 stresses the importance of working within a multi-agency team ‘All agencies should recognize the need for effective collaboration of services involved with the child and with parents. Consultative responsibilities and effective communication systems and management and practitioner levels should be clearly identified.’ (Special Educational Needs Code of Practice 2001 pg. 70)

The responsibility of the practitioner is to work as part of a team with other professionals and staff members effectively to bring children and parents the best possible service i.e. working with social workers, speech and language therapists, and family support workers. Practitioners must also have a working partnership with parents, to work effectively with the child as the parents are the primary carers and they will know what the child is like at home and what the child’s interests are. For example they would have a policy called ”parents as partners”.

Understand how to monitor children and young people’s development and interventions that should take place if this is not following the expected pattern.

The Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage sets out detailed formative assessment suggestions. It recommends that all practitioners should:

In any nursery we have to follow rules and guidelines, we have to work with parents and other professional people if needed for the support of children’s development. When we have a special needs child we will have one designated key worker who had experience with children with disabilities and we will allocate a SENCO officer who will be one named person at our work. If that certain child has specific needs we will need to adapt our setting for that specific child. We can offer different place that will offer support for the parents that will give them professional help, for example a speech therapist, or a health visitor. We need to work with parents because we need to help that child the best we can.

There are a number of different teams that work together to support speech, language and communication with children. Childrens’ language difficulties may appear for different reasons. For this delay in development there are various different professionals that can support the children and help. All schools turn to their special education needs coordinator for initial advice. They are able to work with the teachers to find the best help available from external agencies.

An Individualized Family service plan was designed for children ages birth to age 3. Special education services requirements, have to be established by a professional in order for a plan to begin. IFSPs are based on a family-based approach, which is when parents are active collaborators in their child’s development. During infancy and toddler years’ children diagnoses are identified as a child having developmental delays, instead of a child with a specific diagnosis. Interventions, support, and services, are provided from health and human services. Education is also a service that is supported in an IFSP.

Family-centered principles help professionals recognize that family is the constant in the child’s life and the most crucial source of information about the child. Professionals are required to collaborate with families and share, what is going on with their child and how they are progressing in the program. Some values that my family-centered practice will reflect is working with the family to ensure that they are comfortable with all the decisions being made. In Janice Fialka’s, What Matters, she describes the case conferences she had for Micah and how she wanted ‘more’ from the EI team. She states, “I wanted something from the professionals other than their careful assessments and necessary labels. I knew they cared. […] But I wanted more from them or something different than what felt like a firing of labels.” (Fialka 1997). I don’t want any family that I work with to feel how Janice felt in that conference. I want to ensure that they not bombarded with labels and let them digest what is happening and give them a moment to comprehend all that going on. Engaging, motiving and partnering with families throughout the decision and goal-making process is a very important value to family-centered practice. Collaboration is the cornerstone of effective early childhood special education. (Sandall & Schwartz 2008). I value and respect the collaborative approach that Sandall and Schwartz apply in their book, Building Blocks for Teaching Preschoolers with Special Needs. They