The Next Step
The Next Step is guidance for Practitioners working with children who are making small steps of progress.
The aims of this document are.
- To promote an understanding of child development amongst the practitioners responsible for the care and education of children in the early years. This document provides a summary of child development which will help those working in the early years identify children who might be experiencing difficulties and are in need of additional support.
- To facilitate closer co-operation between those who share responsibility for a child but who are in different roles or from different services. This document will help practitioners to understand and share information with specialists who visit their setting and inform discussions about children’s abilities and needs.
- To facilitate the smooth transfer of information about a child from one early years setting to another. This document provides a common framework for understanding a child’s development and an ability to describe the small steps within that framework that will support improved transitions between settings and into school.
- To promote effective target setting for children with learning or developmental difficulties by using the information in this document to identify what the child can do and then formulate appropriate targets. The first step to helping a child progress is accurately finding what they can do and then finding what the next step might be.
- To promote the successful inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream settings by enabling practitioners to identify and work in small steps. Successful teaching and learning depends on having realistic yet challenging targets for a child to aim for. This document is designed to help practitioners think in those small steps.