Viewpoint’s My Early Years app can be used to provide a picture of a child’s social and emotional development for care and child protection plans. It can be used to identify children requiring more detailed assessments.
My Early Years App gives you access to wellbeing assessments for pre-school children, the opportunity to build a pictorial record of a child’s early years and to provide key information to carers.
The app is particularly useful for foster carers and children in their care but also for social workers and others that support children living at home with their parents with a wellbeing need.
For children under the age of five, Covid restrictions have been in place for a big chunk of their lives.
Recent research has shown that:
· Oxford University researchers found that in the first lockdown, babies and toddlers from disadvantaged backgrounds missed out on activities to support their development, compared with those with more highly educated and well-paid parents.
· Ofsted has reported that the pandemic has significantly impacted the learning and development of children who had left Early Years settings and subsequently returned. They were particularly concerned about children’s personal, social, and emotional development. Some children had returned less confident and more anxious. In some cases, children had also become less independent, for example returning to their setting using dummies or back in nappies having previously been toilet trained. Children with special needs or living in poverty or homes where there’s conflict or abuse could have longer-term issues and need more support.
· The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) research suggests the measures taken to combat the pandemic have deprived the youngest children of social contact and experiences essential for increasing vocabulary. Less or no contact with grandparents, social distancing, no play dates, and the wearing of face coverings in public have left children less exposed to conversations and everyday experiences. As a consequence, an increased number of four- and five-year-olds have been identified as needing help with language. Evidence shows poor speech development can have long-term effects on learning.
Four age-related assessment questionnaires, for children under 5, available via the app, provide a picture of a child’s social & emotional development which can be used to inform individual plans such as care and child protection plans.
For children in out of home care, in particular, foster carers can be encouraged to download the Viewpoint myView app and begin contributing pictures to My Story, ensuring pictorial records are available about key people, places and mementoes. Many children in care still report that they lack pictures and information form when they were younger.
Information is stored securely online, records cannot be lost, and follow the young person even when they move placement.