The Early Years Inclusion Team (EYIT) provides an early intervention and advice service for children with a wide range of special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and their families, who are residents in Bromley or attend an Early Years provision in Bromley.
The service promotes inclusion and also works directly with children, families and practitioners in mainstream early years settings, in liaison with other professionals from education, health, social care and the voluntary sector. This service aims to ensure all young children with SEND reach their potential.
Our Portage Home Visitors agree specific learning goals with parents/carers, designed to meet the child’s individual needs through play experiences in the home.
Locality Teams are made up of Area SENCo/ Advisory Teachers and Early Years Inclusion Practitioners. These teams work in six locality areas aligned to the children and family centre outreach areas.
The role of the Area SENCo/ Advisory Teacher is to support the identification of young children who have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is accurate and successful with effective provision to improve outcomes for them.
A key aspect of the Early Years Inclusion Practitioner’s role is to provide advice and model practical support to practitioners in Early Years settings in the application of quality first inclusive practice and SEND support.
The service operates an open referral system (all referrals must have parental agreement). Referral forms can be accessed at Referrals - Early years targeted and specialist services (bromley.gov.uk)
Each child referred to the service is allocated a member of the team to be the education key worker who is the central point of contact for other services.
If appropriate, families may be offered multi-agency meetings, joint assessment and planning and/or a period of intensive key working. If a child is in a pre-school setting the Early Years Inclusion Team will work through the preschool.
This includes planning for a positive transition to school and ensure the child’s full inclusion.
Special Educational Needs Inclusion Funding (SENIF)
Special Educational Needs Inclusion Funding (SENIF) is funding available to early years settings, to support children with emerging or low-level needs.
In order to be eligible for SENIF a child must attend a Bromley setting and be eligible for the free entitlement to early education funding.
Funding can be used as a contribution towards:
- resources that will help the child
- training which is specific to a child's area of need
- additional staffing to provide a higher staff ratio at certain times
The SENIF offer may vary between settings and might be offered as a one-off payment or as time limited payments depending on need, setting and impact of the funding.
It is allocated on a banded funding basis.
Band 1+ is £3.75 and Band 2 is £7.50. A personalised level is allocated in exceptional circumstances.
The views of families and settings about SENIF is done through an annual survey.
For further details regarding SENIF, any queries or for a printed leaflet, please email your request to: earlyyearsinclusionteam@bromley.gov.uk.