potential mindee with special needs.

[ladylipgloss]

Hi, newbie childminder here so i hope you don't mind me joining your group. I will be starting to childmind in september and have had a visit from a parent who has 2 yr old twins. They are 2 years old. However, one has special needs and has global learning difficulties and mental age of 9 month old. She cannot sit unaided yet. Am i allowed to childmind a special needs mindee or are you supposed to have special training??

You don't need special training but you would need to get involved in the mindee's care program, to a certain extent. You might have speech therapists etc visiting you at home as you would be one of their main carers.

Thanks. parent hasn't mentioned getting involved in her care. She has physio at home early in the mornings and visits specialist but mum takes days off for those.

If you contact your local early years team thay should be able to point you towards extra help, you might find that they would loan your extra equipment that might be needed or give you a grant towards making any adaptations that would be neccessary. Also I expect the family already have a good support network in place with professionals e.g. Portage who would then involve you as an additional carer. Good luck with looking after them I would love to do something like this if I had the spaces available.

hello! as a parent who has used a cm for my sn dd2, no experience required, but it will be a bit of extra work, as i always like cm to be fully aware of all issues, just in case. i would also be asking you if you could come along to a physio or OT session so they could say 'hi' and give some pointers on handling techniques and positioning etc, esp for feeding. does the littlie have speech and language therapist too for communication/ feeding issues?
how does s/he communicate?
not trying to put you off btw - there are nowhere near enough cm's who are prepared to take on kids with sn!
it's ok for mum to say 'oh, i'll do all that' but unless you are fully integrated into her therapy programmes you will not be able to carry on the good work whilst she is with you. and ma not feel as confident as you should in your role.
mum may be saying this as she is worried you are concerned about the additional commitment - she will probably be thrilled beyond belief if you said you would prefer to be fully involved - i know i would!!

I agree with Romy. I had a sn mindee and asked to be involved so I could carry on the care while mindee was with me. So I introduced the parents to the portagt team and the speech therapist came and did a session with me and mindee in my home so I could carry on her good work. The portage team visited me every week. It would make you feel more comfotable with helping mindee develop and with mindee's care, and I am sure parent would be very appreciative that you are taking an interest.

I agree that there are a lot of cm's that will take on a sn child.

sorry, i have never heard of the portage team. Could you tell me a bit more about them and how i can get in touch. Thanks.

portage is a service provided to babies and pre-schoolers with developmental delays etc - it usually involves a portage worker visiting the child at home for an hour or two per week to provide developmental play and learning opportunities - and give the parents and care-givers some ideas of new toys to try/ games to play etc (they bring all their own toys - fab). mum will be able to tell you if the child has portage or not.(it may be that this is something else which is done on mum's day off...) in some areas it's called slightly different things (home visiting teacher etc). each area differs as to qualifying criteria though, and some areas stop the service if a child takes up a nursery place, for example.
don't forget that as a registered childminder you should be able to access your local toy library and there is usually a well stocked sn section offering all sorts of specialty toys suitable from birth up. in some areas if you look after an sn chld the toy library service is totally free!

I've minded children with varying special needs. It can be hard(er) work, but very rewarding.

Depending on what the special needs are, there may be extra training involved - I've had to learn about giving injections (definitely not my favourite subject!)

I've also filled in occasional development-type reports (nothing heavy-duty at all) which is just information on how a child is doing when with me.