Pre-School Special Educational Needs Service (PRESENS)

PRESENS link together services for children with disabilities (e.g. Cerebral Palsy)

Our son was born just before 30 weeks and for his first year we assumed his physical development was delayed just as a result of his prematurity. However, when he was just over 18 months he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. He’s received support from Seaside View to help progress his physical mobility as much as possible but the amazing work of the PRESEN service has also been invaluable to his development. For many parents of children with special needs there is an overwhelming maze of different teams to navigate. The PRESEN service have helped us focus on what our son needs and has been phenomenal at linking together all of the different parties to create a plan which works for him. Without our dedicated, and expert, PRESEN support, we would have struggled to coordinate the input required to get him to a mainstream pre-school, which is now setting the path for a smooth as possible transition into reception. Without this support, he wouldn’t have got the focus and understanding needed to do this and we wouldn’t have known the right questions to ask and when. The PRESEN service are ensuring he gets access to the same resources and education as his non-disabled peers and helping him to reach his full potential. Every child deserves this.

Here is the story of a delightful young boy who has Cerebral Palsy, Cortical Visual Impairment and Social Communication Needs. This story was written by his father.

Our son was born 3 months premature weighing less than a kilo (just over 2 pounds). He also suffered a bleed into his brain and had a procedure to try to remove the toxins of this bleed. While in hospital the doctors warned us that there was a 50% chance that he would have quite severe physical or cognitive disabilities, but compared to those odds we have, in some ways, been lucky.

Our son, now 4, can walk, talk and is coping well within a mainstream nursery. But he only started walking independently at 3 with the help of splints. He has problems with his vision. His speech is often very repetitive and out of context with what’s going on around him. While he can be interested in other adults and children he is very socially awkward and only recently started recognising people by their name.

At almost every stage of his development, our son has needed additional support to help get him to the next level. And every professional on this journey has always said that the earlier you can intervene to help a child like ours, the better the long term impact. As a parent this means that you are constantly worried about whether you are doing enough for your child right now.

When our son was around 2 years old we faced a dilemma. On the one hand we knew that his social development was delayed and that he would benefit from being with other kids in a nursery (especially as he has no siblings). However, we were also worried that the nursery might just sit him in the corner rather than putting in the extra effort required to get him properly involved. PRESENS have been key to solving this dilemma.

Not only did PRESENS help us get the additional funding for our son’s one to one support, but even more crucially, our PRESENS teacher goes into the nursery to run highly tailored sessions with our son and to help ensure that the nursery staff have a good program of things to do and ways to interact with our son that help bring him along. These ideas have helped our home routines too.

Every term we revise the program of help for our son and our confidence in this process is precisely because an experienced PRESENS teacher is involved. As fantastic as the nursery is, they simply would not be able to develop the kind of highly tailored program of help that a child like ours needs.

PRESENS gave us confidence to put our son in mainstream nursery and the PRESENS program of help within nursery has been fantastic for him. The outcome for our son is that we are now confident that he can, with similar support, do well within a mainstream primary school next year. And because he’s doing so well, we’re also increasingly hopeful that one day he won’t need any significant support when he goes to secondary school, and who knows, maybe university one day.

Our son has been lucky because PRESENS have been there for him every step of the way. But what about the next generation of children? Even if these cuts to PRESENS are reversed in the future (as they would in any decent society) the impact of the cuts on the children affected in the next few years could be permanent.

If you want to tell the story of your child please use the comments box below or email your story to: saveourspecialistteachersbandh@gmail.com