Early Years Psychology

About Us

Our team supports babies and children with Significant Additional Learning Needs / Emerging Developmental Delay / Diagnosed or Genetic Syndromes, as well as their families, to understand the child’s needs, find ways to meet these needs and support families with their feelings and emotions surrounding their experiences.

Additional Learning Needs are identified through the completion of a Schedule of Growing Skills Screening Assessment, usually completed by a Health Visitor.

We work together with families and involved professionals to help families to navigate the new path they find themselves on.

We offer several services:

Portage

Portage is a home visiting service which offers support and help to families who have a pre-school child with Global Developmental Delay (GDD) or an emerging Learning Disability.

A Child Development Advisor (CDA) will usually visit fortnightly and support your child’s development through play and record their progress using the Portage Developmental Checklist. You will need to practice the skills daily. This can continue until the term after your child’s 3rd birthday, where the emphasis is then on transition to nursery

Click here to access some practical ideas to support your child’s development, such as action songs, storytelling, number activities and edible sensory play.

Baby Massage and Story Massage

Baby Massage is the gentle rhythmic stroking of your baby’s body using your hands. It helps with relaxation, bonding and much more. Story Massage is a short course that can be run alongside Baby Massage or as a standalone activity. You will learn different massage strokes that can be done through clothes to put with rhymes and stories to give an added dimension to storytelling. It has all the benefits of Baby Massage plus added fun.

Hayley is a trainer and would come to your house over a 4 to 6 week period and teach these skills to you.

Advice and support for avoidant and restrictive eaters

Justine is a Sequential Oral-Sensory (SOS) trained feeding therapist. The SOS program allows a baby or child to interact with food in a playful, non-stressful way, and considers the evidence base and Steps of Eating alongside this.

Justine is able to also offer a consultation-based approach to all the children or babies that our team works with who have restricted diets and faddy eating up to the age of 3.

Support and understanding around children who display challenging behaviours

E-PAtS: Early Positive Approaches to Support

To support families of children (aged 0-5) with global developmental delay/emerging learning disabilities.

The E-PAtS Parent Support Programme was developed by the Tizard Centre at the University of Kent by Dr Nick Gore and Jill Bradshaw, using Co-Production.

The group runs for 8 weeks, with options of attending in-person at multiple sites across Cardiff and the Vale or online. The groups are always delivered with a professional from the field and a parent carer who offers their lived experience. E-PAtS is designed to reduce the risk of behaviour that challenges occurring by supporting parents/carers to develop the necessary tools, confidence and understanding to put preventative strategies in place in the early years. Thus preventing behaviour becoming too problematic or very difficult to manage into adulthood.

E-PAtS provides high-quality information and sensitive support in the early years to help build bright futures for children with disabilities and their families. Families that have attended describe an improvement in their own wellbeing, an increase in confidence in understanding and dealing with their child’s behaviours and finding ways to advocate for their child to educational and medical professionals.

1:1 Psychological Support

Our Early Years Practitioner supports families with children aged three and above, offering developmentally informed, needs led guidance that strengthens understanding of emerging skills, emotional development, and behaviour. Integrating psycho

education, emotional support and Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) aligned behavioural insight to help parents make sense of their child's experience and develop responsive attuned strategies. Drawing on systemic, trauma informed relational and psychological approaches to promote co-regulation, early social communication sensory understanding, and skill building. Alongside direct support, helping families navigate multi-agency pathways, provide clear signposting, contribute early interventions are accessible, collaborative, and grounded in evidence based early years practice.

Referrals can be made through a Llygad referral form and sent to SPOA.

Llygad Consultations

Llygad consultations are available to health professionals who would like advice or guidance regarding the most appropriate support for a child and family. These consultations provide an opportunity to discuss individual circumstances, explore available options, and consider appropriate next steps. Consultations are undertaken jointly with colleagues from the Local Authority to ensure a coordinated and holistic approach.

Requests for a consultation can be made by submitting a Llygad referral form (to SPOA) or contacting the team email; Llygad.eye.cav@Wales.nhs.uk

Consultations run on First Monday of every month.

Parent Carer Peer Support

Nikki Chard is the Parent/Carer Peer Mentor within the Llygad Team. Drawing on lived experience as a parent of a child with autism, Nikki supports families by providing peer mentoring, emotional support and guidance. Nikki plays an important role in ensuring the voices and experiences of parents and carers are represented within the service, helping to strengthen the connection between families and professionals.

The Parent/Carer Peer Mentor role is an internal service for families actively engaged with the Llygad Team and is not currently available as a standalone referral pathway.

Training

The team offer Llygad Awareness Training providing information on the team, with detail on what Llygad offer and how referrals into the team can be made. These sessions are offered to any health care professionals who are interested in finding out more about Llygad. For more information please contact the team email; Llygad.eye.cav@wales.nhs.uk

How to access support from Llygad

This service accepts referrals from any child health professionals, such as Health Visitors.

Health Visitors can perform a screening assessment, known as the Schedule of Growing Skills, with the children with whom they work. The results of this screening assessment are used to evaluate whether this service is appropriate for your child. In addition, as much information on the child and family is important to help us inform the correct support is provided.

For referrals for Portage, 1:1 behavioural support or a Llygad Consultation, a referral form is to be completed and then sent to SPOA.

For a referral for E-PAtS, a conversation is to be had with Cardiff Family Gateway (0300 013 3133) / Vale Family Compass (0808 281 6727 (Option 1)) about the family, their current needs and what would be an appropriate referral to best support them. An E-PAtS referral will be discussed at this point, and then referred into Llygad.

Upcoming Events

We often run monthly coffee mornings, annual picnics in the park and other events for past and present families who have accessed the team.

Please see the Llygad Padlet for all of our upcoming events;

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