Using the Early Support developmental journal for babies and young children with Down syndrome

This workshop will equip participants to use the Early Support developmental journal to celebrate the progress of babies and children with Down syndrome and to support effective early intervention for them, across all areas of their development.

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About the Early Support project

Early Support is the central government mechanism to improve the quality, consistency and coordination of services for young disabled children and their families across England.

Down Syndrome Education International led the production of the Early Support Developmental journal for babies and children with Down syndrome published in September 2006.

Visit the Early Support web site to find out more about this programme or to download the developmental journal.

The charity is now training all Early Support accredited trainers for this resource and also offering direct training in the use of the journal to local authorities or any interested group to enable you to use the developmental journal with children and families in your area.

Who should take part in this workshop?

The workshop will be valuable for parents/carers and for practitioners across all the disciplines involved with children and their families from birth to 5 years.

The developmental journal has a key role to play in supporting partnership working with parents/carers.

How the workshop is structured

In this one-day workshop participants will learn how the developmental journal fits into the Early Support programme, how it was developed, what it contains and how to use it.

They will also learn about the specific developmental needs of children with Down syndrome and how to take account of these when designing and delivering effective early intervention to families and children.

They will be provided with a guide to further resources to support this work.

Course content

The course content and timetable are shown below:

One-day programme: Using the Early Support developmental journal for babies and young children with Down syndrome
Workshop: Introduction, welcome and programme for the day
Workshop: Early Support: Setting the context, making it happen
Workshop: Partnership with parents in action: The Developmental Journal
Workshop: Finding your way around the Developmental Journal - what is it and why?
Practical Workshops: Using the Developmental Journal - supporting progress
Workshop: Partnership working with the Developmental Journal and issues around local implementation
Workshop: Summary, conclusions and evaluation

Find out more

The courses will be held at various locations in England depending on demand. We aim to run workshops for groups of no more than 20 participants (and not less than 10).

The courses can also be arranged in other locations if there is sufficient interest.

We can offer an additional day covering the development and early intervention/education needs of children with Down syndrome to ensure that your staff are up-to-date with the latest research and practice for this group of children and their families.

Costs

This training day has been devised with Early Support and costs �2,200 plus VAT for two trainers for a maximum of 25 people, ideally no more than 20. Additional costs for the training include overnight stay for the night before (two rooms), evening meal and subsistence expenses and travel at 47p per mile including VAT.

Other requirements

This Training Course requires two rooms, one main room and one for breakout sessions. The trainers will each bring a lap top and both will need loudspeakers for playing video clips on their laptops. The main room will need a screen and projector to link with a laptop.