Inclusion, IEPs and IFSPs

What we can support well

A child who needs more time, more warning before transitions, a quieter space, a visual routine, or an adult who stays closer than usual. All of that is ordinary good practice extended, it costs us nothing beyond attention, and there is no supplement for it.

A child whose therapist visits them here. Early Intervention and CPSE services are frequently delivered in the setting, and we make space, time and a member of staff available for that, and we do what the therapist asks us to carry on with between visits.

There is a separate quiet room with acoustic lining, which was built for children who need less noise and turns out to be used by a much wider range of children than that.

What we cannot do

We employ no speech and language therapist, no occupational therapist and no physical therapist, and we do not deliver therapy. Where a plan specifies a service, that service comes from the public system or from a provider you arrange, and we host and support it rather than provide it.

We do not have a nurse. A plan requiring clinical monitoring, complex medication administration or medical procedures during the day is asking for something educators cannot lawfully or safely supply.

And we cannot provide continuous one-to-one supervision inside our ordinary ratio. Where a plan requires a dedicated adult, that adult has to come from somewhere, and working out where is part of the conversation before a place is agreed rather than after.

Why the conversation happens before enrolment

Because a place accepted and then found unworkable is the worst outcome available. It costs a family months, it costs a child a second unsuccessful setting, and it is entirely avoidable by reading the plan first.

So: bring the IFSP or IEP itself to the enrolment visit. Not a description of it. We will go through it line by line, say what we can carry, name what we cannot, and where the answer is no we will say so directly rather than going quiet and letting a waiting list do it for us.

We will also tell you what we would need in order to say yes, where that is knowable. Sometimes the gap is a therapist's visiting schedule or a funded aide, and knowing that gives a family something to work with rather than a closed door.

Once a child is here

The plan is known by everybody in the room, not filed in an office. Its targets get built into ordinary activity rather than delivered as a separate session at a table, which is both better practice and less isolating.

We attend review meetings and we contribute written observations. Four months of notes from adults who see a child on ordinary days is unusually useful evidence at a review.

And the child is a child in the room, not a case. Nothing about a plan changes who they play with, what they are offered or what is expected of them beyond what the plan actually says.