Integrated reviews for 2 year olds are to be introduced in September

"The report on a pilot integrating the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Progress Check with the Healthy Child Programme (HCP) health and development review has recommended the ‘integrated review’ is renamed to avoid confusion about how checks can be carried out..."

"The HCP 2-2½ year health and development review similarly looks into the learning, social skills and speech and language skills of children between the ages of 24 months and 30 months and is carried out by health professionals."
"The move to integrate the progress checks was announced at the end of 2014 and will be introduced in September 2015..."
"The pilot followed the five areas of Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Medway, Leeds and Islington and measured how they developed and carried out their integrated approach to combined progress checks which identify a child’s health and well-being, learning and behaviour and arrange support for families with children where progress has been less than expected..."

"The report stated: "Involvement of experienced health visitors, rather than solely nursery nurses within health visiting teams, was important for accurate clinical judgements. Early years staff were not always able to make accurate judgements on health elements. Involving experienced staff from both health and early years seems essential." ...

"Concerns about the integrated review have been raised by nursery owner David Wright, who runs Paint Pots nursery."

"He said: "An area of real concern is the practitioner’s qualification to make judgements. We have an understanding of what to look for, how different characteristics associated with certain conditions might present themselves but we do not feel confident nor that it is right to label a child as having special needs, being developmentally delayed or disabled and certainly not at two years old. We would not commit such judgements to paper to be shared with parents. "

"Parents do not want to receive the news that their child’s progress is ‘less than expected’ or that an assessment has identified ‘significant emerging concerns’ regarding her development. "

"Sharing the results of such an assessment is not a task, I would suggest, to be entrusted to a junior practitioner." ..

"The pilot found some cases where there was a lack of trust between health and early years workers, the report called for greater understanding of each other’s professional cultures and practices."

"Another issue raised was a lack of a common electronic system in place to support information sharing between professionals after carrying out the integrated review. Although one main site and one pilot partner was able to create a sophisticated way to share data, other sites experienced problems with having access to and knowing about health records moving forward."

"However the conclusion of the pilot found that integrating the progress checks will successfully provide a more holistic and complete picture of a child’s progress and the move to introduce the integrated system has been backed by the Child and Education minister, as well as the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years (PACEY) and the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA)."

http://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1567033/government-advised-to-reconsider-the-term-integrated-review

Predicting the future, integrating services, data sharing; they are moving in the same direction as Scotland.

Parents do not want the bad news that their child`s future health and wellbeing is in jeopardy and that they will be expected to work with services to change future outcomes.

It`s a crazy idea !