Early Support Developmental Journal

[Guest Wolfie]

Following on from a previous thread about the inappropriate use of P scales for the assessment of SEN children 0-5, I wondered if anyone has used the Early Support Developmental Journal to track progress? I've only just discovered it and it seems ideal - but would love to hear the views of anyone already using it..

 

http://www.earlysupport.org.uk/decMaterial...%20generic.html

[AnonyMouse_4544]

I've ordered the Down's Syndrome pack on the strength of your link on the other thread. It looks very useful ... so I'd be interested to hear too.

[AnonyMouse_13453]

What a fantastic site - some great resources there for my new SENCO

[AnonyMouse_6021]

We haven't used the journal for any of our children yet, but I ordered every information pack I could and I have to say they are excellent!

Karrie

[Guest Wolfie]

Our Centre Manager came from another authority where the Early Support approach and materials were used consistently by every setting in the authority and she is pushing very hard to raise its use and profile in our authority now.

 

It is very new to me but our Centre is now using it for all our children with additional needs and our SENCO says it's fantastic and facilitates a truly multi-agency approach and good team work - and the families concerned are also extremely pleased with the way it is working and how it meets their needs and empowers them.

 

The only bit that we haven't used yet is the profile, hence my question!

[AnonyMouse_13453]

At 190+ pages it seems a bit hefty for some parents, perhaps. As with all these kind of things I find the waste of paper between sections intensely annoying - if you were printing it out, all those blue spirograph pictures would take a lot of ink!

 

Having said that, it does look nice - i'll see what I think when it arrives

[Guest]

Thanks for this Wolfie - materials look great. I have requested copies of the documents to try and get my head round it. Can I ask how everyone intends to use them? I'm guessing that they can be used to track/assess children with SEN?

Tinky

[Guest Wolfie]

Each one of our families is given the Parent Pack at an introductory meeting with the Centre SENCO and then a first Early Support meeting is arranged with the parents, to which all professionals working with the child are invited. From that, an IEP is developed and subsequently worked upon at nursery, at home and with any other professionals working with the child on a regular basis. We then continue to have regular Early Support meetings during the child's time with is and a transition meeting and plan when they leave...this last bit is still work in progress!

 

I'm intending to have the same approach with the Developmental Journal as we have with all the children's Learning Journeys in the Centre, encouraging a close partnership with parents to observe, assess, track and record the child's progress.

 

I really think that these Early Support materials are great and yet so many people don't know about them....and they're free as well. You never see any adverts or links to the website in any of the early years magazines, do you? Maybe it's up to us to spread the word!

[AnonyMouse_13453]

I'm sure you are right, Wolfie. I wonder how many copies you can have for free though, I only ordered 4 - one for each of the staff for our next meeting.

[Guest]

Were using one for a child with a sensory impairement

[Guest Wolfie]

And what do you think of it...and the process of completion..so far?

[AnonyMouse_1326]

It looks good from the quick look that I have had, Book marked to laook at latter

[Guest]

Its a very user freindly format we fill it in with the childs parent, it has helped us in setting up his ipp. We still use our own learning journeys for the child. We have a playworker from the sensory impairement unit come and work with the child and she finds it helpful to see where the child is at in the journal, has helped her in developing new activities we can use in the nursery.

[Guest Wolfie]

I'm thinking that we should just use the journal for tracking rather than our own "tracker" as well - but like you, we'll still kepp the file of observations, photos, samples of work, etc. for evidence.