The information below is particularly relevant for practitioners working with children in the early years or those at a similar developmental stage.
‘Practitioners need to decide what they want children in their setting to learn, and the most effective ways to teach it. Practitioners must stimulate children’s interests, responding to each child’s emerging needs and guiding their development through warm, positive interactions coupled with secure routines for play and learning.’ (Early Years Foundation Stage EYFS 1.16)
Emotional regulation allows children to manage their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours. Some children may need extra support when emotions become overwhelming.
Websites
- What is attachment? | Anna Freud a booklet designed to help Early years practitioners increase their understanding of attachment.
- Help for early years providers : Emotions provides guidance from the DfE about creating a safe environment for children to explore emotions and learn how to regulate them.
- Self-Regulation: What is Self-Regulation and why is it so important? - Foundation Years provides information about self-regulation in young children.
- Social and emotional development - Action for Children offers ways to support young children with sharing, social skills, making friends, building relationships, kindness and consent.
- Colour Monster Activities for EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) - Blossom Educational
- Supporting communication skills and emotions - Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives offers strategies to implement in your setting to develop communication skills linked with children’s emotional development.
- Poppy O’Neill helping children and their parents understand emotions through Zones of Regulation.
- ZOR interventions Zones of regulation to develop self-regulation
- Using PACE in School offers guidance on supporting children who have experienced trauma and may behave differently from others in your care.
Self-help Resources
- The Leuven Scale - Emotionally Healthy Schools use the Leuven Scale to assess children’s Wellbeing and involvement in your setting.
- Supporting Children's Self - Regulation in the Early Years is a Sway resource that helps early years practitioners understand and promote self-regulation in children within their settings.
- calmingstrategies
- Emotional regulation (pdf format, 183Kb)
- Oversensitivity (pdf format, 218Kb)
- Tactile strategies (pdf format, 207Kb)
- Under sensitivity (pdf format, 247Kb)
Training
Understanding Behaviour in the Early Years Understand what children may be communicating through their behaviour. Gain a deeper understanding of children’s social and emotional development, and the factors influencing this. Find out how to provide, develop and maintain an emotionally secure provision for all children.
Specialist support in setting
The Early Years SEND Advisory team work with individual children under 5 years of age who have complex learning, communication and/or social interaction differences. Individual children can be referred using an Early Support SPORFI form (docx format, 585Kb). Support is given to the family and/or the child’s early years setting or nursery class in collaboration with other agencies from education, health and social care.
The Early Years SEND Advisory team also provide universal and targeted support to Oxfordshire early years settings and schools in order to promote effective inclusion of children with SEND. Settings and schools can use the SENDCO Helpdesk to ask for ‘no names’ advice and targeted setting support.
A Single Point of Request for Involvement (SPORFI) (xlsx format 170KB) is a multiagency form used to request support from various educational and health teams for children under 5 with special educational needs and/or disabilities. For further information see the Single Point of Request for Involvement (SPORFI) ) Flowchart (pdfformat 200KB).
Complete the SPORFI form (docx format, 585Kb) to make a request. Services that can be requested include:
- Speech and Language Therapy
- Speech and Language Therapy (feeding)
- Physiotherapy
- Occupational Therapy
- Early Years SEND team
- SENSS – Physical Disability
Health Visiting Services offer support to families at home and in the community from pre-birth until the child turns 8 years old. See information on how Health Visiting and early years settings working together.
Early Help Children’s Services Early help refers to the collaborative approach taken by all services working with children and families to provide support for a family before problems escalate. Accessing early help can address potential issues and improve outcomes for children, young people, and families. More information can be found here.
The Behaviour Inclusion team offer guidance, advice and support to aid inclusion of children in school-age classes with SEMH needs, preventing suspension and exclusion and supporting reintegration into education. Advice from Behaviour Inclusion Officers can be accessed via the SENDCO Helpdesk or the schools linked Exclusion and Reintegration Officer to support a referral.