Inclusive Nurseries

[Guest]

My vision for the future is for all children with special needs to be educated alongside mainstream children. I have only come across a few nurserys where inclusive practice is good practice, but these are still not fully inclusive. How hard do you think it would be to open a nursery where all staff are trained in special needs early education and the equipment is suitable for both mainstream children and those with special needs? Does anybody know of any settings where full inclusion has been successful?

[Guest]

Hi there

I run a pre-school in Stockport and just next door to us is a fully inclusive nursery which has been running successfully for many years now. It is called Charnwood nursery and has Sir Cliff Richard as one of its patrons.

It started off many years ago in the house of the founder Grace Wyatt and grew and grew so that some years ago it moved into purpose built premises. It has an excellent reputation in the Stockport area and caters for both disabled and able bodied children to learn side by side. It is a charitable organisation primarily with able bodied children paying for their places while disabled children are free.

Their web site is www.stockportmbc.gov.uk/nursery/charnwood/index.htm

It is worth a look. Hope this is of help to you.

Linda

[Helen]

Hi Abby,

Do you have any involvement with inclusive nurseries? I'm sure members would be interested to hear about your experiences. I don't think it would be difficult to find staff who would enjoy the challenge of being trained to support such fully inclusive facilities, but I guess the whole thing comes down to money. If I were trying to set up such a setting, I'd start with finding out about NOF funding.

I'm not sure about the terminology....are we talking about able-bodied and disabled children, or about all children with very different special or additional needs?