Meeting Special Needs in the Early Years

Directions in Policy and Practice

Sheila Wolfendale

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134093892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The chapters in this work describe and explore: contemporary assessment and intervention work with young children with Down's Syndrome, and with hearing, vision, physical and language special needs; the ways in which policies are being translated into practice; and inter-agency co-operation.

Chapter 1

The State and Status of Special Educational Needs in the Early Years

Sheila Wolfendale

Introducing the book

We welcome readers to a book that celebrates the burgeoning field of early years special educational needs practice, and we invite those of you who work in this area to read, relate to, identify with ideas and their applications; perhaps to be stimulated and challenged in your own practice. The book is aimed at those who work within early years/SEN, as teachers, their non-teaching colleagues, educational psychologists, administrators, policy-makers and practitioners in training.

The authors all have a strong teaching and SEN background; many of them now work or have worked as educational psychologists; others work as lecturers, administrators, advisers. Collectively they bring a wealth of experience in working with young children or on their behalf across a range of special needs and disabilities.

I would like to acknowledge at the outset the help and support given to the preparation of this book by members of a group of educational psychologists who have a brief or remit for working with early years/SEN within their local education authorities, and who meet, twice a year, at the University of East London to share, debate and discuss issues and developments in that area. The group endorsed the idea of and need for a book that would bring together contemporary practice, and indeed several of the authors are members of that group.

Reason and rationale for the book

Few texts currently exist in this area. There are several chapters in a number of edited early years or special needs books (Herbert and Moir, 1996; Wolfendale and Wooster, 1996) and two other recent texts on early years/SEN (Wilson, 1998; Roffey, 1999). There is a wealth of effective and innovative local practice that could and should be disseminated and shared more widely and which could provide the source and stimulus for other work. There is, correspondingly, considerable practitioner expertise and there is scope for practitioners to describe and discuss their work within a wider forum, such as this book.

Various pieces of legislation with associated Guidance are now in force, the policy and practice effects of which need to be explored within the public domain – the 1993 Education Act, Part Three; the 1994 Code of Practice and its section on Under Fives; due for revision during 2000 and implementation during 2001; the 1989 Children Act requirements for provision for (young) children in need; the OFSTED inspection and early years/SEN Framework for Inspection; the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Early Learning Goals (QCA 1999) which has implications for curriculum for young children with special needs.

The state and status of SEN within the early years

Wolfendale and Wooster (1996) provided a chronological résumé of the increasing profile of SEN in the early years, and this provides the context for this section.

The Warnock Report (1978) gave under-fives and special needs a higher profile than previously by recommending it as a priority area in terms of teacher training and increased provision. Emphasis was given to the proven effectiveness of intervention programmes, including Portage, to partly justify this call for increased investment in the early years as both a preventive and ‘remedial’ measure.

Warnock paved the way for the legislation that amended existing law on special education, namely the 1981 Education Act (implemented from April 1983), which conferred new duties on local education and health authorities in respect of identifying and assessing young children with possible special needs. The accompanying circular to this act was updated in 1989 (Circular 22/89) to take account of the 1988 Education Reform Act as well as recent developments and contained a whole section on under-fives with special needs, reflecting developments that had taken place.

The next significant legislative landmark in the arena of special educational needs was the 1993 Education Act, Part Three of which referred exclusively to SEN (please note, the 1993 Education Act was subsumed along with other Education Acts, into the consolidated 1996 Education Act). That Part of the Act repealed the 1981 Education Act, retaining core principles and formal assessment procedures, but strengthening a number of parental rights and clarifying the processes. Schools are now required by law to have written accountable SEN policies. The 1994 Code of Practice constituted a set of guidelines to which LEAs and schools must have ‘due regard’ in the planning and delivery of SEN services, from pre-school onwards.

The Code of Practice acknowledges the importance of partnership between LEAs, child health and social services in working together to meet the needs of children under five with SEN. A whole section in the existing Code of Practice is devoted to ‘Assessments and Statements for Under Fives’. The revised Code, mentioned above, will still have an early years section and indications are that this will be strengthened and cross referenced to existing early years initiatives such as Sure Start (Glass, 1999, and see below) and the QCA Early Learning Goals.

There is now plenty of evidence to show that at every level of practice, management and policy-making, special needs in the early years is in receipt of more attention, resources and provision than at any other time. Personnel working within these areas are bound to implement and have due regard to such legislation, including the 1989 Children Act and its emphasis upon: needs definition, service provision for young children ‘in need’ and with disabilities, registration and review. Strong encouragement is given in these various Acts of Parliament for practitioners to work together more effectively. Some local authorities began to consider and implement joint commissioning of early years, mental health and children’s services, and indeed Children’s Services Plans have been mandatory since April 1996.

The framework for such inter-agency and collective responsibility is now The Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership, required for each locality (DfEE, 1999) which, amongst other requirements, must provide for SEN in early years settings.

The Partnerships must, in written form, provide information about the following: details of the support which will be provided to ensure that all early years education providers have means and procedures to identify and address special educational needs; the range of childcare and early education provision available and appropriate for children with SEN and disabilities; how the Partnership plans to make provision more inclusive; training opportunities in SEN for early years staff; advice and written information available to parents/carers about child care and education opportunities for their children and support for themselves.

This is the broader context within which quality in the delivery of early years SEN services is to be judged, and some of the key themes relating to that context are further explored in this chapter.

There is considerable progress to celebrate; both the state and the status of SEN within the early years have been elevated in recent years. This book, whilst celebrating developments and innovations, also provides a reminder that these foundation years must be properly invested in and resourced.

Content and organisation of the book

The book’s coverage is intended to portray some of the range and depth of contemporary early years/SEN work at all stages from identification, assessment, intervention, provision, review. It is an explicitly practice-focused text, showing, we hope, the complex interplay between theory, principles, policy and practice in an area which encompasses statutory procedures (i.e. statutory assessment under the 1993 Education Act) within non-statutory provision.

It was decided at the outset that the book should include a greater number of chapters, sacrificing chapter length for range and diversity. Collectively the chapters show differing angles and perspectives upon key activities referred to in the preceeding paragraph. The chapters have been loosely ‘clumped’ and progress somewhat schematically, throughout the book. We have tried to be as inclusive as possible and hope that readers will forgive us for any perceived omissions.

The next three chapters (2–4) provide accounts of facilities and provision and encompass assessment and intervention, illustrating models of practice (and see Sayeed and Guerin, 2000). Chapters 5–9 explore assessment and intervention with and provision for young children with identified areas of special needs and disabilities. Chapter 10 presents the relationship between policy and practice, and can be said to provide a macro-systemic perspective. Chapter 11 discusses implementing educational psychologist practice in assessment from a set of articulated principles and theoretical formulations. Chapters 12 and 13 focus on inter- and multi-agency working. Chapter 14 explores basic principles underpinning nursery education with reference to special needs and critically appraises the Nursery Voucher Scheme (this scheme is now defunct; the chapter stands as a useful historical marker). Chapter 15 provides a reminder of principles of an inclusive approach towards young children with special educational needs, which should underpin good quality provision. Several of the above themes will be commented upon in the remainder of this chapter.

Assessment

The Code of Practice constitutes the blueprint for effective early years SEN practice. It could be said to codify existing good assessment practice in the early years, into which context specifically assessing for special educational needs forms a legitimate part. In other words, assessment for special needs is inclusive assessment practice.

The range of approaches to assessment – direct observation of children at play or involved in specific learning tasks, systematic record-keeping, checklist completion, cognitive testing – are not the monopoly of SEN specialists (Hinton, 1993) and practitioners such as the chapter authors would not want to divorce their assessment approaches from such mainstream practice. What is specialised about assessing young children with a view to identifying their special needs is competence in:

• closely focusing on specific behaviours

• relating these to a child’s overall functioning

• appraising functioning, within a broader, ecological or situation-specific context

• analysing and interpreting a range of assessment findings

• synthesising all the evidence

• presenting to and sharing the information with others

• taking single/collective action as a consequence of the assessment evidence.

Some of the chapters in this book show (a) how a number of ‘acts of assessment’ cohere in these ways, and that (b) assessment leads to action, (c) that the participants in acts of assessment share and act upon the information. Such interlocking assessment practice betokens a shift in the last few years, away from single-discipline assessment, the results of which might or might not be shared. The Code of Practice reinforces the view that assessment per se (of whatever sort, testing, observation, etc.) is sterile unless it is a collective activity.

The nursery/playgroup/day care practitioners play a significant ‘front line’ part in keeping close, detailed records on children which constitute the basis from which more ‘specialist’ assessment can take place – by special needs teachers, educational psychologists, speech therapists, and others. Principles of assessment, as set out by Drummond and Nutbrown (1996) and Wolfendale (1993) for example, inform all early years practice, including, integrally, special educational needs. What crucially drives these principles is something which might be called ‘the ethics of assessment’ (Nutbrown’s equivalent phrase is ‘respectful assessment’, 1996) which emphasises that:

• The ‘best interests’ of children be paramount at all times.

• Children’s prior experience and achievements be valued and celebrated.

• Diversity and difference in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Note to Readers
• 1 The State and Status of Special Educational Needs in the Early Years
• 2 A Pre-school Assessment Model
• 3 STAR Children’s Centre – Comprehensive Working with Young Children with Special Needs
• 4 Play, Assessment and Culture
• 5 The Multidisciplinary Assessment of Under-Fives with Cerebral Palsy
• 6 The Special Educational Needs of Children with Down’s Syndrome
• 7 Early Years: The Integration of the Visually Impaired Child
• 8 Supporting Deaf Children in the Early Years: An Inclusive Approach
• 9 Language Impairment in Pre-schoolers
• 10 Provision for Special Educational Needs in the Early Years: Policy and Procedures within one LEA
• 11 Principles into Practice: An Assessment Framework for Educational Psychologists
• 12 Surveying Professional Practice in Early Years: Multi-disciplinary Assessment Teams
• 13 Educational Psychologists and Inter-agency Collaboration for Pre-school Children
• 14 ‘All Young Children Have Needs’
• 15 Inclusive Education for Children with Special Educational Needs in the Early Years
• Index