Pre school teaching

[jambuttie]

can someone explain it too me please?

DT2 has this arranged for him, he was placed on SN register a few weeks ago and we are still awaiting a dx.

It has been confirmed he has low muscle tone and has joint hypermobility.

OT and SALT are coming to our home on monday.

OT to see what support aids they can help with and SALT to have lunch with him as he has difficulty swallowing

Orthotist measured for his boots and got letter to go in on Thursday presumably to collect them.

Any info you fine people can add will be gratefully appreciated.

Do you mean portage? I only ask as portage workers here are usually specialist pre-school teachers. If not, feel free to ignore me. :)

not sure really, they just said at CDC that they had arrange home pre school teaching for him

Describe portage to you coppertop ,we are in scotland so it maybe is the same thing but called something else up here.
Im a friend of jambutties bBTW ,hence why im sticking my bit in here!!she wont mind!!

We had a portage worker and a preschool teacher. She didn't teach really, her job was to co-ordinate help for Ds2 at preschool. So she organised funding for his 1-1 worker, helped preschool set targets, helped us apply for a statement and a place in a SN unit. Don't know if that is what they mean. Portage and preschool support worked from the same office here but are different services.

sorry to butt in on someone else's thread but have to ask. Has portage changed? when dd was small a prtage worker came to out house once a week the whole idea didn't work as dd couldn't do any of the tasks. sounds like they give much more support now.

I think it's different in different LEAs. The paed looking after DS formally informed the LEA that he would be likely to have special needs. We were then passed onto the Early Years Inclusion Service part of the Specialist Teaching Service and it's been great. We've had a specialist preschool teacher visit every week doing playbased activities with DS focusing on his communication, play and concentration skills. I've learned a lot about how to best speak to and play with him. In addition she has also been into nursery and set up an IEP, visual timetable and supported the staff there. Part of her role is to help his transition into school and she's been liasing with the school and about to start some introductory sessions there with him.

I can't speak highly enough about her or the service that's been provided. DS loves her, has responded well to her programme and for me having someone coming each weeek has been a great support. Am just sad it is all coming to an end once he's settled in at school.

As well as the Early Yrs Service Autistic Outreach have a preschool teacher who does home based work for those kids with an ASD diagnosis (DS didn't have his when he was referred) and there is also Portage and preschool teachers working with hearing and vision impaired children too.

Lx

Thanks for all your input.

I am still a bit confused with it all really, Loobie has been a great help and explains it all better to me- god that makes me sounds thick!!!!!!!

Ds1's portage worker used to visit once every 2 weeks. We would talk about any specific problems or issues and the portage worker would either give immediate advice and strategies or she would do research and phone later to say what she had found out. She also attended all of ds1's pre-school IEP meetings and pretty much acted as a go-between for us when it came to contacting the various people involved in ds1's care. She put in a lot of work organising ds1's transition to pre-school and made sure that the Head was kept in her place at all times. :o Knowing the Head as I do now, this still makes me laugh when I think about how p*ssed off she must have been by it all. :o

Ds2 had a portage worker from a much younger age so his needs have been slightly different. His portage worker first met him a couple of weeks before he was due to have his multi-disciplinary assessment so spent that time generally getting to know him and us. She visits every 2 weeks or so. Sometimes she brings toys that she thinks ds2 might like or even makes games for him that will appeal to his interests and obsessions. She acts as a go-between for us and finds out any info we need. She helped arrange funding (with the SENCO) for ds2 to have extra help at pre-school and also managed to get him a place at a playscheme last summer when technically he was still too young. She attends all the IEP meetings and basically goes out of her way to help us in any way she can. When it was ds2's case conference she even offered to look after him for us so that dh could go too - and this was on her day off!! We will all really miss her when ds2 starts school next year.

I can't quite keep up with how all the organisations fit together but the portage worker is a fully-trained pre-school specialist teacher working with/in the Early Years Inclusion Service.

will have to wait till i get the letter/call and find out more too

It seems to vary tremendously from one area to another doesn't it? Here, it was called the home visiting service ......or something like that. Don't worry jambuttie. I was confused at first too until I worked out who everyone was and what each specialist did.
Before my DD started at nursery we had a year or so when the home visiting teacher came to see us regularly. She was wonderful, arrived with bags full of toys/activities and loads of enthusiasm. She gave me loads of ideas too. To be honest my DD was able to do very little at that stage and found new people and new situations very daunting but the teacher took things very slowly at first & found DD's level. She was the one to help us with the transition to nursery when the time came. Several years on we still keep in touch.