SEND Health and Early Years

SEND Health and Early Years

In the early years, health professionals are the first professionals’ parents and carers come into contact with, and are usually their first point of call for advice, support and information.

Your child may have been recently diagnosed or is on the way to being diagnosed, and you are introduced into a new world of health services you didn’t know existed. It can be confusing to know who all the different health professionals are and so we have a created a page listing the different services, with links to the relevant pages on the NHS websites. The NHS websites not only tell you more about what each service does, but also important information about referral routes, and how you can access those services.

The full range of Health services can be found here: Health services for children and young people with SEND

The services which are the most likely to be involved with your child during their early years, are:

Community Children’s Nursing Team (Orchard Service) and

Integrated two and a half year old review

The integrated review at age two has retained all key aspects of the existing two-year progress check and Healthy Child Programme (HCP) health and development review, as set out in key governmental guidance.

Through developing communication links between health visitors, early years practitioners and parents or carers, a more complete, holistic picture of a child’s progress can be gathered, identifying developmental needs and offering timely support or interventions.

The integrated two and a half year old review should:

improve multiagency working and sharing of information to support families
reduce duplication
provide clearer and more consistent information for parents or carers
provide a more holistic understanding of a child’s needs
provide earlier identification of needs and earlier access to support
contribute to improved outcomes for children

For more information see

Health referral pathways

When you are concerned about an aspect of your child’s development it can sometimes be difficult to know who the best person is to speak to, and not all agencies can refer to all the different health services.

As we have said, the best person to speak to in the first instance, depends on the age of your child and the nature of your concerns, it could be your midwife, health visitor, school nurse, GP, key worker at nursery, SENCO or class teacher at school.

You will find below a guide to which health services different professionals can refer to, but you must always check the health service webpage for the most up-to-date information.

Some services accept self-referrals, these are:

ADHD pathway
Health Visitors
School Health Nurses
Speech and Language Therapy
Reach4Wellbeing

Ante-Natal support and Midwives

They can refer you to:

Community Children’s Nursing Team (Orchard Service); or NHS:
Hearing and Visual Impaired Services

Childcare settings (nursery/preschool)

They can refer you to:

Family Hubs

They can refer you to:

Doctor (GP)

They can refer you to:

Health Visitors

They can refer you to:

Community Children’s Nursing Team (Orchard Service); or NHS:
Hearing and Visual Impaired Services

Starting Well Service

They can refer you to:

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