{"id":6363,"date":"2024-03-20T14:43:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T14:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/?page_id=6363"},"modified":"2026-05-06T09:56:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T08:56:41","slug":"inclusion-practitioner-team","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/send-local-offer\/early-years\/specialist-support\/inclusion-practitioner-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Years\u00a0Inclusion\u00a0Practitioner Team\u00a0\u2013\u00a0support for families\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About our team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We&nbsp;support&nbsp;families&nbsp;in their home,&nbsp;when they have a child&nbsp;under five<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>who has&nbsp;significant or profound&nbsp;Special Educational Needs and\/or Disabilities&nbsp;(SEND).&nbsp;Our aims are to work with families and children so that they&nbsp;can&nbsp;learn together, play together,&nbsp;participate&nbsp;and be included in their community.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our team of Inclusion Practitioners&nbsp;support children to achieve success using a&nbsp;small steps, play based, child centred approach.&nbsp;We are&nbsp;registered&nbsp;with the National Portage Association&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.portage.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Welcome | National Portage Association<\/a>&nbsp;&nbsp;recognised nationally&nbsp;as an early intervention service.&nbsp;We&nbsp;work collaboratively&nbsp;with parents&nbsp;in the home,&nbsp;in&nbsp; the&nbsp;community&nbsp;and with early years&nbsp;settings and partner agencies,&nbsp;to promote inclusive practice and to build confidence and resilience.&nbsp;This&nbsp;ensures&nbsp;that support is offered, at the right time and in the right place.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the key principles of&nbsp;support&nbsp;from an Inclusion Practitioner is to work&nbsp;together with parents and carers on a regular basis to support the child\u2019s learning. We will ensure that your child is referred to other agencies&nbsp;where&nbsp;appropriate&nbsp;to&nbsp;enable continued support for any ongoing need, for example, physiotherapy or speech and language therapy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To access&nbsp;support for families the child must&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Show significant or profound delay in at least two or more areas of development, one of which must be&nbsp;cognition (acquiring&nbsp;knowledge or understanding)&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Present with significant and complex neuro-disability, for example, autism spectrum disorder,&nbsp;or&nbsp;be&nbsp;emerging&nbsp;neurodivergent. This must be significantly&nbsp;impacting&nbsp;on their cognition, their ability to learn and their ability to&nbsp;participate&nbsp;in daily activities.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Present as pre-verbal or have significantly impaired communication.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Have an existing diagnosis of a&nbsp;medical or genetic&nbsp;condition, where there is likely to be significant or profound delay to include cognition.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Support available<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When we receive a request for support&nbsp;if it is&nbsp;identified&nbsp;that the child has a significant or profound level of need&nbsp;an initial&nbsp;visit will be offered. We&nbsp;meet with parent carers&nbsp;to&nbsp;identify&nbsp;family priorities, examples of areas some families&nbsp;request support&nbsp;are, play, communication, sleep,&nbsp;diet&nbsp;and emotional regulation.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If during the&nbsp;initial&nbsp;visit it is&nbsp;identified&nbsp;that&nbsp;the family would like support and the child has a&nbsp;significant&nbsp;or profound level of need,&nbsp;an Inclusion Practitioner will be&nbsp;allocated&nbsp;to the family.&nbsp;Practitioners&nbsp;will&nbsp;use the Portage Model&nbsp;to&nbsp;offer guidance and support&nbsp;in the&nbsp;following areas; family focus, child led play and structured teaching.&nbsp;Working in partnership with parents&nbsp;to&nbsp;determine&nbsp;priority areas of support.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inclusion Practitioners&nbsp;will spend time with the parent carers and&nbsp;their&nbsp;child to assess their&nbsp;child\u2019s strengths and needs&nbsp;and complete a developmental assessment. Once an assessment has been&nbsp;completed, they will&nbsp;create&nbsp;individualised&nbsp;small step targets for parents to support their&nbsp;child\u2019s learning and development,&nbsp;matched to the child\u2019s pace and style of learning&nbsp;to enable&nbsp;continued&nbsp;success.&nbsp;The Inclusion Practitioners also share information and signpost families&nbsp;to other services and agencies for further support.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Inclusion Practitioners&nbsp;work in partnership&nbsp;with parent\/carers and&nbsp;early&nbsp;years&nbsp;settings&nbsp;(nursery, pre-school, childminder) to&nbsp;promote&nbsp;inclusion and consistency&nbsp;of approaches&nbsp;which&nbsp;support all areas of the child\u2019s development.&nbsp;Inclusion Practitioners&nbsp;can support&nbsp;transitions&nbsp;for the child&nbsp;into&nbsp;early&nbsp;years&nbsp;settings and&nbsp;schools&nbsp;including advice on requesting Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who can refer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>parents or carers&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>early years settings\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>any health, social care or education professional working with the child or family (or both)&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a onclick=\"dataLayer.push({&amp;apos;buttonEvent&amp;apos;: &amp;apos;Information page&amp;apos;});\" class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/Pages\/ResponsePage.aspx?id=gzehjWjLP0S7S5l_d_1b-8O_fin1b8pCp7xostnS_DNUNjlPVThMV0dFRDMxTk1aWTczVjBXWUhBTi4u\" rel=\"noopener\">Make a request for support now<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About our team We&nbsp;support&nbsp;families&nbsp;in their home,&nbsp;when they have a child&nbsp;under five&nbsp;who has&nbsp;significant or profound&nbsp;Special Educational Needs and\/or Disabilities&nbsp;(SEND).&nbsp;Our aims are to work with families and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":367,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-6363","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-15 15:18:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6363"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73150,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6363\/revisions\/73150"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}