PEOPLE working with babies and young children are being invited to sign up for free training in Skipton in supporting children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their families.

North Yorkshire County Council is rolling out the Early Years Inclusion Project run by the charity Dingley’s Promise in order to increase the number of young children with SEND accessing early years and childcare places. The course is designed to provide people working in the early years sector with the confidence and skills to support children with a wide range of additional needs.

The training programme, funded by Comic Relief, is free and looks at how children’s environments enable learning, how to consider different developmental levels and learning styles and how staff can work together to offer all children opportunities for learning.

Although it is aimed at early years practitioners, it is open to anyone who works with children aged from birth to five and can be completed at any time, from any location in North Yorkshire. There are a total of four courses with a further six to be developed over the next five years. The courses result in the setting receiving a Kitemark to show they are an inclusion friendly setting and the individual learner will receive a certificate of completion to use in career development.

Brougham Street Nursery, in Skipton, is on the steering group which will help oversee the roll-out of the training across North Yorkshire.

The nursery, which was this year shortlisted for the Early Years Foundation Stage Setting Of The Year award in the Times Educational Supplement Schools Awards 2022, has a large percentage of children with additional needs.

About 40 per cent of children at the nursery have additional needs, meaning they have significant difficulty with their learning and need extra support throughout their day and 25 per cent with complex needs – meaning they have an illness, disability or sensory impairment which needs a lot of additional support on a daily basis.

Michael Pettavel, co-headteacher, worked as a headteacher in London before moving into early years education. He said training in SEND helps create an environment where activities and routines include all children and has far-reaching benefits.

He said: “Inclusion creates a positive culture right throughout society. We still struggle with including others with disabilities within everyday life, whether that’s children or adults.

“One thing we do by being fully inclusive is we show children are open to ideas that everybody is part of society. Whether it’s another child with disabilities, language disorders, cerebral palsy or who doesn’t have spoken English. Some needs are more hidden than others.

“Training in inclusion allows children the benefit of living in an inclusive society. It changes the way society operates. We want to get to the point that when they see someone in the supermarket, or on the bus, they see each other as friends.

“There’s a very fundamental concept behind the idea of inclusion which is about changing attitudes and attitudes of children by parents and parents by children. These children in nursery now are the paramedics, the nurses, the pilots, the bus drivers and the CEOs of the future. We all have a shared responsibility to make sure each children does well – it’s to all of our advantage.”

Dr Alison Stewart, who runs Brougham Street Nursery with Michael as co-headteacher, said: “Inclusion training goes beyond children with Special Educational Needs. It’s about supporting children who are developing their language and communication skills and who are developing those skills at different rates.

“When I began working in this nursery school it was life-changing. It’s incredible to support someone developing their language, whether that’s children with complex needs, language delays or child refugees. You are providing them with life skills and opening up their world.”

Parent Lisa Milburn was provided with a portage service by North Yorkshire County Council, which is a home-visiting service for families of children with SEND. She said having a range of early years practitioners in nurseries and early years settings who were trained in inclusion and supporting children with special educational needs would be a lifeline for parents and carers in the county, as well as children.

She said: “Having a child who can’t go to mainstream nursery for whatever reason is isolating, no-one else really understands the sheer disappointment of not seeing your child enjoy a ‘normal’ nursery life.

“So when we were introduced to portage it changed our lives. We had the most amazing portage teacher who made us feel totally at ease and gave a nursery experience for both my boys. We all looked forward to our weekly session; my boys had fun with all the activities and I got to talk to someone who was fully understanding for our situation.

“It was a lifeline to me as a mammy and I’ll be forever grateful."

To sign up for training visit https://dingley.org.uk/dingleys-promise-training/early-years-inclusion-programme/ or for further enquiries email training@dingley.org.uk