One minute guide: Portage

Portage is a pre-school home visiting educational and support service for young children with special educational needs and disability. The aim of Portage is to help parents and carers to become teachers of their own children in their own homes.

Portage uses small steps teaching to help children learn in all areas of their development; for example, physical, social, communication and play.

The Portage offer in Leeds

Following an assessment, the family may be offered home visits, telephone consultations or signposting to other relevant services. The offer is based upon the child and family’s needs. If the assessment indicates that home visits would be beneficial, families are allocated a Portage Home Visitor, who makes regular home visits, usually fortnightly, lasting approximately 1 hour.

Home visit support will be offered for a maximum of up to 12 months; the duration of this level of support is dependent upon the child and family’s progress and their ongoing level of need. There are three main elements to each home visit: structured teaching, child-led play, and family focus.

A Portage Home Visitor supports parents and carers to take an active role in finding out what their child ‘can do’, identifying goals, and planning activities towards the next steps in their child’s development. Leeds Portage Service is registered with the National Portage Association (NPA).

Which children and families the Portage service work with

Requests to the Portage service can be made in the following circumstances:

• the child is aged between 0 to 2.5 years of age
• the child presents with 50% delay in 2 or more areas of development: cognition and learning; social communication and interaction; speech and language; social, emotional and mental health; physical; nursing/medical; hearing; vision; and sensory
• the family are living in the Leeds local authority

How requests are made to the Portage service

There are three ways to make a request to the Portage service, dependent upon who is making the request:

• parents or carers can make a request by completing a Leeds Portage Service Request Form. Also, any practitioner working with the family can make a request as long as they have the agreement of the child’s parents or carers
• all health professionals should complete a Health to Education Notification (HEN), ensuring they have the agreement of the child’s parents or carers
• if the child is attending an early years’ setting and the family agree home-based support should be requested, the SENCo (SEN Coordinator) in the setting should complete a One SEND Services Request for Support. The form should be completed on the understanding that the Portage offer will be home-based

A member of the Portage team will contact parents or carers to inform them of the outcome of the request and the Portage offer for them and their child.

Other support the Portage service offer

The Portage service works closely with other professionals involved with the child, for example, ICAN (Integrated Children’s Additional Needs) teams, the Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Team (SENIT), and health visitors.

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