NARP Special Nursery School

[PinkLem0nade]

Hi parents

My daughter currently attends nursery and she may have special needs as her development is severely delayed.

The nursery have mentioned she may benefit from attending a NARP Nursery School when she turns 3

(Nursery Assessment Resource Provision (NARP) where children aged 3-4 who have been identified as having very high levels of special needs come to attend a specialist nursery setting)

Has anyone sent their child to a nursery like this? Have they seen any significant growth with their child's development?

The NARP school is only a 3 hour time slot in a day and I feel that is not enough time for a child that age to develop, she currently goes for 5 hours half day in her current nursery.

We are currently in the progress of the application and she may or may not get a place as its high demand in the borough.

Really hoping anyone is able to share their experiences 🙏🏼

Hi, I've just come across your message as I'm looking for a similar answer. I've also applied for my child to join a NARP and just heard hes been accepted. He has the same needs as you've described for your child. He hasn't been officially diagnosed with anything but cant talk yet and is behind developmentally. I'm so worried about him starting and I'm just hoping I've made the right choice! Just want him to make as much possible progress before starting reception next year, and I'm hoping sending him to this nursery will help because they have all the resources and the staff ratio is 2 adults to 4 kids... so I'm guessing its bound to help! Did your child end up getting a place?

Hi. My child did end up getting a place the process has been really long with many meetings. Really happy to hear she'll be getting more support.

@PinkLem0nade my daughter is in a nursery which sounds similar although I don’t recall it being referred to as a NARP. She turned 4 this April and has made huge improvements in communication (was only labelling, not able to request anything verbally to being able to pretty consistently express her needs in 2-4 word sentences), her understanding has improved a lot. She’s still not quite conversational but it’s like having a totally different child when I think back to how she was last September. Hard to know how much was helped by the nursery and how much was natural development but I do feel it was great for her. The set up in her class is that they have a small group with high staff to student ratios (I think 3:1) and they will break out into small group work for an hour at a time where they follow OT and SLT plans and the rest of the time in free play with the mainstream nursery. We also had only 3 hours a day but were able to condense it into 2 full days and one half day. Technically they had OT and SLT on site but the NHS referral process was so messed up she only had her assessments recently. The staff were so experienced though they were able to improvise. The SENCo has been incredibly helpful with the EHCP process and they had block bookings with the council EP (as most children were expected to need an EHCP) so we had recommendations from the EP about what they would consider to be a suitable school setting even before the EHCNA request was put in. She will be starting reception in a resource base attached to a mainstream school in Sept and I think she will be devastated to leave! Hope all goes well for you.

Thank you so much for your feedback that has been really helpful. I will be starting her EHCP this summer 🙌🏼