Children with Additional Needs

It is vitally important that when working with children with additional needs to ensure that the environment they are in provides them with the best outcomes and opportunities in life. Children who have additional needs have many experiences within their lives where they need support from certain services. Therefore to provide this support it is extremely important that all disciplines work together in an efficient and harmonious way, as this will be providing each individual with the best services which will benefit the child and their family.  

Having looked at how vital and dependant these services are for children with additional needs, it is now relevant to see how these services work together and what their role involves.

P6/M5

Working in partnership is extremely important to helping children and there are many people/services available to provide this support to them, however to provide the highest standards of their services it is vital that they work together.
When certain services work together this is also known as ‘multi disciplinary working.’ The term ‘multi disciplinary working’ is taken from the term ‘team work.’   Team work is essential in assessing and supporting a child’s abilities and needs, because it would be impossible for one service to provide all of the services needed for that child. Professionals from all different services come together as a team to support the changing needs of a child with special needs. Parents are also considered as valuable members to ‘multi disciplinary working’ and are usually invited to attend meetings that involve the child’s welfare. There are many different services that are involved in multi disciplinary working when supporting a child with additional needs and their families, these are:

Doctors
A doctor’s role is to diagnose the child and to provide medical advice to them and their families. Doctors also have an important role in assessing the child, in order to keep medical notes on the child...