Your child’s Health and development review is an opportunity for you to see how your child is progressing (children are all different and will develop at different rates for all sorts of reasons). These reviews are carried out by either a Health Visitor or a Community Nursery Nurse.
You will be contacted by your Health Visiting team when your child is aged between 2 and 2 and a half years old.
Before the review you will be sent two Ages and Stages (ASQ) questionnaires for you to record all your child’s achievements and they will also give you chance to highlight any concerns that you may have about your child.
The Ages and Stages questionnaires are a reliable, researched based screening tool which provides an overview of how your child is developing. The first ASQ looks at general development in 5 different areas whilst the second questionnaire ASQ questionnaire focuses on your child’s social and emotional development; how well your child copes in social situations, as well as managing their emotions.
At the health review we also use ELIM (Early Language Identification Measure) which looks at what words your child is able to say and how they communicate. Your child might know lots of words or only a few, it is not a test, but it helps us to understand your child’s level of communication. We can refer to ‘Early Talk’ which is a course run by the Family Support service . The course aims to boost your child’s communication skills and help with your child’s speech and language development.
The review will be face to face in a clinic setting and will give you the opportunity to discuss:
- Your child’s development, speech, behaviour and toilet training
- Your child’s health, including diet
- Vaccinations
- Early Years education
- Family environment and safety in the home
- Your child’s Emotional health and wellbeing
- During the review your child’s weight and height will be measured.
The Health Visiting team will offer further advice and support, and will refer to other professionals if any needs are identified at the review.
You can find more advice and information in the ‘Your child at two collection’.