New website tool to make it easier for practitioners to fully understand children’s SEND needs
An online website to help improve the understanding of children’s SEND needs will be run by Dr Susana Castro and Dr Olympia Palikara from the University of Roehampton’s School, This three year project has received 380,000 Euros in funding from the European Commission
Working alongside Dr Susana Castro and Dr Olympia Palikara will be colleagues in Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey and Macedonia. The whole team will work together to create this new website tool.
The intention for this online website is to help professionals in early years implement recent changes to SEN legislation. The website will give professionals more detailed information rather than just a general diagnosis.
The website will be based on the ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), which was developed by the WHO. It will allow early years professionals to input children’s information, this information will then help provide practitioners with the necessary information on the right level of support for the child. The online tool will help settings develop EHC plans and make the relationship between multi agencies easier.
At present the system is not well known in the UK but is used in settings in Germany, Portugal and many other countries.
Dr Palikara said, ‘Professionals working with children on a day-to-day basis require a common language in order to describe and meet their needs across the sectors of education, health and social care in a form that can be understood by all.
‘There is a well-documented need for professionals to work more closely together, but until we launched this project, there were limited specific resources available to help us describe a child’s individual functioning profile within a team of professionals. The development of the ICF-MedUse tool will address this gap.’
In terms of the information that this would provide, Dr Castro said that, for example, ‘You can have two children with the same diagnosis, e.g. autism or Down’s syndrome, but they may have completely different behavioural patterns. One could be good at instigating social interaction with peers, and another not.’
A pilot study training practitioners in early year’s settings on how to use the tool will start in 2017.
- The Roehampton team would like to hear from early years settings interested in taking part in the pilot. Please email susana.castro@roehampton.ac.uk or olympia.palikara@roehampton.ac.uk
For more information on the project visit www.icfcy-meduse.eu