If you have read the Early Years Inspection Toolkit you may have noticed that something called the ‘graduated approach’ is mentioned in the ‘Inclusion’ section.
‘Leaders and practitioners use the ‘graduated approach’ (a continuous cycle of ‘assess, plan, do and review’), which helps to ensure that children receive an appropriate level of support and meets children’s needs, and practitioners receive suitable training and support to implement it.’ Early Years Inspection Toolkit 2025 Page 12.
But, what is the ‘graduated approach?’
The graduated approach is a four stage cycle designed to help support children with special needs. It consists of four stages:
- Assess
- Plan
- Do
- Review
Assess:
This part of the cycle is the stage when a child’s development is assessed to find where they are experiencing difficulties or barriers to learning. This assessment involves gathering information from different sources, including:
- observations completed by the childminder,
- information shared by parents,
- information and opinions from other professionals who work with the child, such as health visitors or practitioners in a shared setting,
- other sources of information such as records held about the child.
The gathered information is then used to plan the right support for the child so that it matches their needs.
For example:
A child’s childminder notices that they appear to have trouble saying certain words. She observes carefully, writing down exactly how the child speaks. She then talks to the parents to see if they have noticed anything at home. The parents have noticed that the child’s speech is sometimes unclear but have thought no further about it. Once the information is gathered it is clearer that the child is struggling identifying and pronouncing ‘s’ and ‘t’ sounds. The childminder compares this information to information held on the speech sounds children are expected to be able to use at the child’s age and this shows that child has a delay in this area.
Plan:
The planning part of the cycle involves planning what support will be put in place to benefit the child. It involves everyone involved with the child, such as the SENCO (in childminding settings this is, by default, the childminder), parents, specialists, and, of course, the child themselves. The plan includes what support will be put in place in the setting and what parents agree to do with the child at home. It also includes the outcomes the support is expected to achieve and timescales for assessing whether the support has been effective.
For example:
Following the observations done by the child’s childminder during the ‘assess’ part of the approach, a child appears to be struggling with the pronunciation of the ‘s’ sound. The childminder, parents and child’s key worker get together and agree to some simple exercises for the child to take part in in the setting and for the parents to support by repeating at home. It is agreed that the first target should be for the child to listen carefully and be able to start identifying the ‘s’ sound in words they hear. The childminder also works with the parents to get the child referred for a hearing test to rule out any hearing problems. A timetable of six weeks is put in place to review whether the support has had any effect.
Do:
This stage of the process involves putting the planned support into practice. It is down to the childminder or the childminders assistants if they are the child’s key worker, and the parents to implement the support on a day-to-day basis with the child. The childminder and any specialists involved help by tracking the child’s progress to check that the support being provided is appropriate.
For example:
The childminder reads special stories with lots of ‘s’ words in with the child and asks them to listen carefully for the ‘s’ at the beginning of the words. The stories are also sent home for parents to share with the child there.
Review:
At the end of the agreed period of support the review process takes place. This involves deciding together, whether the support has had a positive impact with the outcomes being achieved, or if the desired progress has not been made, meaning changes need to be made. The review process should be a positive one involving everyone involved but focussing on the child as an individual. The child should have a voice in the process and the language used should be clear enough for the child and their parents to understand. The child should be able to talk about what they have done, achieved and enjoyed, or, if they are very young, the person that knows them best voices this for them. The review should decide what support needs to be put in place moving forward, for example, another cycle of the graduated approach, a move to sourcing additional support, or if the support has worked, moving back to no additional support needed.
For example:
At the end of six weeks, the child and their parents get together with the childminder to see if the support helping them to recognise ‘s’ sounds has been successful. The parents report that the child enjoyed joining in with the stories at home and the child says they liked the ‘Silly Snake’ story the best. The child’s key worker reports that the child is now able to recognise the ‘s’ sound four times out of five so the support has been a success. However, the child needs further support with the ‘t’ sound so it agreed to put another cycle of support in place with strategies that will build on what had already been achieved, before reviewing it again.
Note: When working with early years children one cycle of the graduated approach should be no longer than six weeks. Working through two or three cycles of the graduated approach should enable you to see if the support you have but in place is enough to help the child, or if you need to approach other professionals for additional support. It also means that if you do have to ask for help from other professionals, you have started to gather some good evidence of the child’s needs.
Welly Wren resources that can help you assess and record children’s development
Development Records
These new Development Record will help you record and celebrate children’s progress and share it with their parents on a regular basis. It allows you to record more detail than a tracker, with space to record comments of notes under different development stages but is not as complicated or as time consuming as creating a learning journal.
Each Development Record is set out with sections for each of the Prime and Specific Areas of Learning as well as sections to record the child’s Characteristics of Effective Learning.
There is an introduction and tips for the childminder and information about the record to share with parents to help encourage effective working in partnership.
Progress Check at Age Two pack
It is a legal requirement to complete a progress check for any children in your care when they are aged between two and three years old. This pack is an essential childminding resource which guides and supports you through the whole process, ensuring that you are fulfilling all of your statutory duties while getting the most value out of the check or both you and your families.
Completing the check properly is not just a case of copying some development statements onto a piece of paper and giving it to the child’s parents. The pack fully guides you through a five step process making sure you are doing things correctly. From help on how to write a accurate and useful report, to working with parents and other professionals and finally putting into place actions generated by the report.
The pack contains all the resources you need, including templates, report samples for children at different levels of development, and information and information sharing guidance and resources.
This pack is complemented by the new Development Records, in particular the Age 24 – 36 months Development Record.
