Introduction
The Council for Disabled Children (CDC) leads the EYSEND Partnership and is delighted to be working with five partners: nasen, Speech and Language UK, Contact, Dingley's Promise, and the Early Childhood Unit (ECU) at the National Children’s Bureau. Providing support across 9 English regions, the partners each bring specific expertise to the project, and work on different aspects of early years, SEN and Disability:
- nasen on a whole setting approach to SEN and Disability
- Speech and Language UK on early identification and an early response to speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) in young children, and the development of a local SLCN pathway
- Contact on working with parent carers in the early years
- The Council for Disabled Children on Ordinarily Available Provision and the Equality Act
- Dingley's Promise on strategic support for transitions
- The Early Childhood Unit (ECU) at NCB on the home learning environment.
The programme is being grant-funded by the DfE through their VCS programme from August 2023 to March 2025. This time we are working with family hubs networks to best support disabled children and children with SEN during their earliest years. There are three main strands of activity:
- Strategic support to family hub areas through regular meetings or ‘action learning sets’
- Targeted training for practitioners from family hub areas.
- Open-access training for parents and carers.
The learning from all this work is shared through a series of regional seminars and events held in January, February and March. See more about our upcoming events and seminars by accessing our training calendar.
For more information please contact [email protected] or sign up for our mailing list here.
Other training and support that is available through the programme
As well as support to local ALSs, each of the partners will be providing training and support to professionals and parents across the 9 regions. Our training page will be updated regularly.
Where training and support is only available in a limited number of areas, partners will take into account local needs and the priority given by the area to addressing a particular aspect of local provision.
