SEND in early years - child with downs syndrome

Published June 4, 2025 Written by Rebecca Smith

SEND in early years: identifying special educational needs or disabilities

Discover how to identify and support children with potential Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND).

Identifying if a child has Special Educational Needs or Disabilities

It is vital that all staff in your nursery are able to identify and support children who may have SEND. If you start to suspect a child in your care may have SEND, you first have to gather all the evidence.

This evidence for SEND can come from:

Your own observations of the child in the setting
The information you receive from parents when the child starts or on-going, as part of a regular exchange of information
The health and development review carried out by the health visitor when the child is aged two
The two-year progress check completed by the setting
The child’s own views, either verbal or non-verbal, shown through visual cues, choices and interests
Views of your Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) and any other practitioner or professional who has observed the child.

What to do with the SEND evidence?

When you have brought together all the information, the key questions to help you decide whether a child may have SEND include:

Does the child have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than their peers?
Does the child have a disability that prevents or hinders them from making use of the resources and facilities in your setting?
Does the learning difficulty or disability call for special educational provision, i.e. do you have to provide things that are additional to, or different from, the provision usually made available?

Supporting parents of children with SEND

It is important to talk to the children’s parents to ensure you have a shared understanding of the child’s strengths and needs. This will support the discussion with professionals, who can help to provide support and advice for parents and the nursery setting as to how best to support individual children.

Looking for more support for SEND in early years?

See our Championing SEND programme for nurseries, our Role of the SENCo live virtual training or our SEND awareness online course.

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