Joined Up Working - Making it Happen
Working Together with the Early Years Child
An Innovative CPD Package from the CALL Centre
This inclusive new CPD package will provide opportunities to put into practice the principles of the new Additional Support for Learning Act & Code of Practice, and Community Health Partnerships, through:
- Child-centred work (complementing Co-ordinated Support Plans)
- Partnership with and support for parents
- Joined-up, interdisciplinary working between professions
- Emphasis on sharing assessment information and inclusive communication issues.
Introduction
Personal Communication Passports are a way of making sense of more formal assessment information and recording the important things about a child, in an accessible and child-centred way, and of supporting children's transitions between services. However, professionals - and equally, parents - do not necessarily have enough time, confidence or knowledge of good practice in inclusive communication to make Passports successfully. Importantly, also, a Passport is more than the end-product booklet. Creating a Passport is a process. The decision to create and use a Passport gives a clear focus for ongoing home/school liaison, partnership working with parents and for interdisciplinary collaboration. If this good practice is laid in place in the Early Years, it can become a model for identifying and co-ordinating strategies to meet additional support needs throughout school and other services.
This new course introduces professionals and parents to the Passports process, in an interdisciplinary format, motivating and supporting them and building-in good practice, giving them time while also focusing them on successful completion through provision of a structured timetable with a target completion date. All studies looking at how to promote 'joined up working' between different professionals have recommended joint training as one effective route - here is an excellent opportunity to achieve that, through the use of Passports as a common focus.
Course Participants: all those working with Early Years children
Ideally - a mixture of some / all of the following: parents; pre-school educational visitors or home visiting teachers, staff working in nursery and in other education authority funded settings eg. private nurseries; Social Work staff; P1 / 2 teachers and classroom assistants; staff from voluntary agencies, eg. providing home support, short breaks; speech and language therapists and assistants; others.
Package Outline & Costs:
- Costs to authorities: £3,000 plus travel expenses (or as adjusted to circumstances)
- Course of 4 face-to-face session (1 full day, 3 half days or twilights, or negotiable) spread over 1 term / approx. 3 months for up to 12 participants.
- A little practical 'homework' in between sessions, for participants.
- High level of personal tutor support, highly qualified/experienced tutor(s).
- Copies of Sally Millar's book 'Personal Communication Passports: Guidelines to Good Practice' supplied (1 per participant, 1 for organisation / local authority link person) plus a range of additional handouts and examples.
- Additional support by e-mail, web site, distance learning if desired, eg. on 'Using PowerPoint to produce Passports'.
Outcomes:
On completion, participants will:
- Understand and have carried out good practice in making at least one Personal Communication Passport, to facilitate the child's transition into Nursery / Primary School.
- Understand how a Passport relates to and can support other forms of assessment, planning documentation and record keeping.
- Be awarded with a CALL Centre certificate, accrediting them in Passport work. (CALL is a GTCS registered CPD provider.) Be joined to the CALL Centre 'Passports Network' and informed of any new resources on web site, publications, events etc.
In the course of this, they will:
- Become confident about identifying key questions to ask about the young child with additional support needs, and about how to find out the answers – collecting information from different professional disciplines.
- Support parents in taking control of the Passport process.
- Gain awareness and knowledge of the use of pictures and symbols to support language development and communication in children, generally.
- Understand how to involve the child actively in his/ her own book, making choices etc.
- Learn how to observe and describe communication behaviour and to identify strategies and techniques to maximise and develop good communication.
- Gain experience in making sense of it all, and in drawing 'need to know' information together into easy to read format.
- Form a strong link with family and the key (multidisciplinary) group around at least one child they work with.
- Have a positive experience in interdisciplinary working, which can hopefully be maintained and developed in the future.
- Feel confident that they could support others in Passport work.
- Consider production of a Passport as a process as well as an outcome of joint working.
- Understand how Passports fit with existing statutory record keeping.
Next Steps - Phone to Discuss / Negotiate!
If you think there might be interest within your authority / parents group / organisation, please get in touch immediately to discuss your requirements.
Contact:
The CALL Centre,The University of EdinburghPaterson's Land,Holyrood RoadEdinburghEH8 8AQTel 0131 651 6235,Fax 0131 651 6234E-mail: Sally.Millar@ed.ac.ukOr fill in and submit the on-line form.
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