The Special Educational Needs Early Years Inclusion Service (SEN EYIS) supports pre-school children with Special Educational Needs. The Early Years Hub (EYH) is the single point of referral to the service. Referrals to the EYH come from Paediatricians for pre pre-school aged children and from Educational Psychologists for pre-school aged children.
We provide advice and support to children, families and pre-school settings.
We provide training for leadership and early years practitioners. This can be accessed by all early educational settings via the Children & Young People's Training portal.
Workshops, advice and tailored programmes are available to families and early educational settings of children referred to the service by the CYPS Early Years Hub.
Queries to the service can be made by contacting any SEN EYIS office by phone. Phone lines are operational during office hours and a voice message facility is available. You can also email enquiries to info.seneyishelp@eani.org.uk. (Please include a contact number and your child’s name in the message).
| Office Location | Telephone Number |
|---|---|
|
Omagh Office |
028 8241 1580 |
|
Antrim Office |
028 9448 2298 |
|
Dundonald Office |
028 9078 4283 |
Transition: Stepping Stones to Preschool /P1
Starting pre-school or school can be a worrying time for both parents and children, however, we can take some simple steps to help ensure a comfortable and enjoyable start for your child.
In this section you will find 3 short video clips providing useful information and advice in preparing your child for starting pre-school. We call this ‘transition’.
Video 1 - explains what is meant by transition and highlights challenges which may occur for some children.
Videos 2 & 3 provide information and suggestions which can be carried out at home to make transition as smooth as possible for your child.
A number of useful, accessible resources are recommended throughout.
Let’s Learn through Play
The best thing you can do to help your child is get involved with their play activities. Every time you interact with your child, you are helping them develop. Some ideas to help are in the guides below:
Let’s Calm
Here are some ideas to help children regulate their emotions and calm.
Let’s Build Language Skills
In this section you will find short video clips showing some ways you can help children build up their language skills.
First Steps to Communication helps develop those very early skills and Helping your Child with Language will help improve language and vocabulary.
The A-Z of Language Activities provides lots of ideas of everyday activities that can be used to help with language.
Nursery Rhymes & Action Songs are great to help children in all sorts of ways, including language skills. Using gestures and actions can really help with understanding and interactions.
Let’s Build up Routine & Social Skills
Having a routine can be helpful as the day can be predictable. You can find some ideas here to help children move between activities in their daily routine.
Let’s Build Independence
We want to help children become more independent and develop their self-help skills.
RISE NI
The Regional Integrated Support for Education team in Northern Ireland (RISE NI) has created a regional website specifically for parents and carers of children in mainstream nursery and primary school (up to P4).
The RISE NI information leaflets, suggested activities/resources and parent training videos aim to promote development of speech and language, fine and gross motor skills, and social and emotional development.