Developing a training package that will equip multi-disciplinary teams of health, care and education professionals to work effectively with children and young people

A suitable and skilled supplier or consortium of suppliers is sought to work closely with system partners across optical, audiology, dentistry and with residential (and potentially non residential) special schools, families and carers at a national and regional level to co-produce the required outputs.

The project seeks to develop, test and finalise a training package that will equip multi-disciplinary teams of health, care and education professionals with the skills and knowledge that is required to work effectively with children and young people with learning disability, autism or both and their families to ensure that effective health screening and interventions for optical, audiology and dentistry can be accessed and is of an appropriate standard. The training package must also be able to be adopted by multiple training providers and educators.

The profession specific skills which are encompassed within the core training for regulated workers and are outside of the remit of this project.

This project will identify, describe and make explicit those tacit skills - capabilities, that are required for practitioners to work effectively with children and young people with a learning disability, autism or both. It will include capabilities such as; an understanding of how to communicate with those with complex needs and their families, how to adapt practice to meet the specific needs of the children and young people, how to work in large multidisciplinary, multi-agency teams effectively and recognising and understanding how best to provide person centred care and support to ensure all children and young people in the schools access and receive the right support.

The final outputs of the above exercise will be the identification and agreement of a set of skills and capabilities that will be mapped to the Learning Disability and Autism Core Capabilities framework.

These capabilities are then required to be developed into a training package that enables the acquisition of the identified skills by a wide range of practitioners. The package of training should be suitable for national delivery on a local basis and at scale, be aligned to the professional requirements of governing bodies and equip professionals to deliver an enhanced service at residential (and potentially non residential) special schools.