Baby Development Groups at The Sarah Duffen Centre

The charity's Baby Development Groups (for infants from birth to 18 months) work with parents and their babies to promote development from the earliest months.

About the Baby Development Groups

These groups work with parents to promote social, motor and communication skills, early vocabulary, and effective routines for feeding and sleeping for children from birth to 18 months.

At the Baby Development Groups the charity's practitioners:

  • give information about the special needs of babies with Down syndrome, tailored to each specific child and family, as the children's needs vary considerably
  • demonstrate activities to encourage each baby's progress which can be included in daily family routines at home.

These activities are all based on the latest research into the children's developmental needs and we explain to parents why each activity will be helpful.

Early days

For the younger babies, the groups:

  • model activities to encourage early non-verbal social communication skills including smiling, visual tracking, eye-contact, turn-taking, and babbling
  • encourage visual and motor exploration and play with sensory stimulation and cause-and-effect toys, initially those which give a reaction for minimal effort
  • demonstrate ways of encouraging motor skill development

Communication skills

The groups:

  • demonstrate signs and explain the value of signing to parents, as 80% of children with Down syndrome have conductive hearing loss and all have speech-motor difficulties - signing accelerates effective communication and cognitive progress
  • target speech-motor skills by first encouraging babies to babble and responding to their babble, and then moving into playing games to imitate and practice speech sounds
  • use games to teach vocabulary using objects and pictures
  • encourage parents to keep records of their children's communication progress.

Social and behavioural skills

Children with communication delays can be more difficult for parents to manage and the charity works on the principle that prevention is better than cure.

From the earliest months, the groups:

  • discuss social behaviour, assist parents with any behavioural feeding and sleeping difficulties
  • encourage parents to have clear expectations for behaviour and settled daily routines

Moving on...

At around 18 months*, each child will be able to progress to our Early Development Groups for children with Down syndrome aged 18 months to 4 years.

Big Lottery Fund logoBookings

If you wish to find out more about booking your child onto a Baby Development Group, visit the joining the groups page.

The Baby Development Groups are supported by The Big Lottery Fund.