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Early Years Support Practitioner (SEND) Service (BRISTOL)

Checked: 23-09-2023 by Vicky Ryan Next Review: 23-09-2025

Overview

Sirona’s Early Years Support Practitioners support preschool children with disabilities and their families. The service operates in Bristol only.

The service offers:

Emotional and practical support for parents and carers.
Coordination of services when many different agencies are involved to ensure a joined-up, holistic service.
Information for families and improved exchange of information between practitioners.
Support children and their parents/carers to access therapy and support groups.

Who to refer

Children aged 0-5, who are not yet in school, who have any type of additional need or disability. The child’s home address must be within Bristol City Council’s local authority area.

Before referral

Children and families can attend the service’s Rainbows stay and play groups. Children do not need a diagnosis to attend and there is no need to book. Details are available on Sirona’s website.

Referral

If you wish, you can make a referral to the team using the Single Point of Entry form.

This form should also be available as an EMIS template.

Please make sure you include as much information as possible regarding the type of support that is being requested. If accepted, we will arrange a triage visit to determine the level of support we can offer depending on the outcome of our initial assessment.

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

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