Early Support - services for disabled children in early years

News: 14 June 2006 - Review of Early Support materials, have your say

Early Support is the central government mechanism for achieving better coordinated family-focused services for very young disabled children and their families.

Local authorities and children's centres need to be aware of the Early Support programme when planning services for this group.

The programme is funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and was developed in response to the government guidance Together from the Start. Its remit was to take forward the principles within that guidance.

It is the government's means of achieving the objectives set out within the Every Child Matters green paper and the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services for this particular population.

The role of Early Support is to raise expectations about the way agencies and services work, encourage change, and provide practical tools to support multi-agency service development at local level.

Its main delivery mechanism will be the 3,500 children's centres to be created by 2010, and its outcomes will be inspected by Ofsted under the Framework for Inspection of Children's Services (Ofsted, 2005).

Since Early Support was established, it has fed into many government policy documents including Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003) and the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit report (2005), Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People.

For further information visit the Early Support website.

Documents

Together from the Start

Improving the Life Chances of Disabled People