Children with Additional Needs

Portage and Early Support

Portage and Early Support is an education service for pre-school children with additional needs, run by the Children's Services Department and NHS Barking and Dagenham. Services for young deaf children including family support are also based with Portage and Early Support.

Barking and Dagenham Portage and Early Support works with very young children who have additional needs and their families. Ideally we like to start working with a family as soon after the baby's birth as possible.

The whole emphasis of Portage and Early Support is on the early years and we work with the child's parent or carer in the home to develop skills in all the main developmental areas.

Portage and Early Support is based on regular visits to the child's home by a trained Portage worker. The Portage worker works closely with the child's parent or carer to establish the skills the child already has and then, together, decide on what skills the child needs to go on to learn next.

Each visit will last about an hour. The parent or carer and the Portage worker discuss learning activities that will help the child begin to learn new skills. The parent and the Portage worker will decide what the child can be expected to learn next.

Tasks that may be difficult or take a long time to learn, like learning to thread beads or getting dressed, are broken down into small steps, which can be practiced each day.

Portage and Early Support also work very closely with any other services involved with you or your child, for example, children's centres, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, educational psychology, day nurseries and pre-schools.

For your child to be eligible for Portage and Early Support, they must meet the following conditions:

Your child must live in Barking and Dagenham
Your child must be under 3 years old
Your child must not be in a day nursery full-time (full time means from 9am - 5pm or longer)
Your child must have a significant developmental delay in 2 or more areas of development. (For example, your child may have a delay in physical development or they may have a delay in developing how they communicate and use language, how they learn and play, how they help themselves or how they form relationships with people. Please remember that these examples are not a full list). If your child does not have a developmental delay now, you must have been told by a doctor that it is likely they could have significant developmental delay in the future, for example, if your child was born prematurely
You must want to be involved with Portage and Early Support

Please contact your health visitor as soon as you have any concerns about your child's development. We have visited children as young as a month old.

History of Portage and Early Support

Portage and Early Support is named after a town in the United States where this type of early education programme was first provided. The programme was introduced in Britain in the 1970s and was set up in Barking and Dagenham in 1978.

How can Portage and Early Support help me and my child?|

Common questions about Portage and Early Support|

Publications|

Welcome to Portage|

Welcome to Early Support|

Understanding the Language: Explaining Jargon|

Children's Centres|

Sensory Rooms|