Pre-school Neurodevelopmental Nursing Team at Longland’s Child Development Centre.
What we do
We are a small team of Specialist nurses who see pre school children with a range of neurodevelopmental needs including developmental delay, autism spectrum condition, complex health conditions and physical/medical concerns. We will review their current presentation and build a plan based on their understanding of their needs. This involves speaking with other professionals to create an in-depth and person-centred plan. This may also involve seeing a child in different environments such as clinic and your own home.
We work as a team to offer additional support and information to families whose children have been referred to Longlands Child development Centre.
We provide a specialist assessment called the Schedule of Growing Skills, that we complete alongside your first appointment with your community paediatrician. The assessment focuses on the child’s strengths and challenges to provide a detailed developmental profile that can support and aid your consultant appointments. We can assure you that we want the best possible outcome for your child.
There may be areas’ where you need specialist advise, support and information. After the appointment with the paediatrician we can offer a home visit to further support. One home visit will be offered and then if required further nursing support will be offered over the phone or you can arrange to come to see us at the Child Development Centre.
Episode of care packages
As part of our service we can offer specific interventions called ‘episodes of care’ tailored to your particular need at that time.
What we can help with
Support and advise - We can work with you to identify areas of support you feel you may need. signpost or refer you to other services who would be of benefit to you and your child.
Development - Usually a developmental assessment is carried out in the clinic with the paediatrician but at times this is difficult therefore we may carry this out in a different setting.
Sleep - We can offer support with sleep issues your child may be having due to their additional needs.
Toileting - We can offer toileting support for children with additional needs, ensuring you child has the best start to toilet training by ensuring a healthy bowel and bladder.
Behaviour – We can support you with challenging behaviour by offering some initial advice and if appropriate signposting or referring to other services who are best equipped to support you.
How you can be referred
We can work with any pre school child under the age of 5 who has been referred to the child development centre.
We will explain our service at your inital appointment and as part of your assessment if we identify areas of unmet need we can then complete a referral to our service and allocate you a practitioner to complete an episode of care in the area of need.
If at this time no need is identified we can accept re-referrals at any point by contacting your paediatrician or asking a health professional to complete our single point of access referral form which needs to be sent to icntteamreferrals@mbht.nhs.uk
Be mindful this list is not exhaustive, please refer to the local offer for further information.
Useful websites for education and resources
- NHS website: how to deal with challenging behaviour in children
- Challenging Behaviour Foundation
- Young Minds - Supporting you and your mental health
- Dimensions: For people with behaviours of distress (‘challenging behaviour’)
- Mencap - challenging behaviour and learning disabilities
- The National Autistic Society
- Parent toolkit - Ambitious about Autism