What is Portage?

What is Early Help and Portage?

Portage is a home-visiting educational service for pre-school children who have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families.

The name comes from the town of Portage in Wisconsin, USA, where the first home teaching scheme began.

Some of the key aims of Portage are:

• Working with families to help them develop a better quality of life for themselves and their young children, where they can learn together, play together, participate and are included in their community.
• Helping to minimise the barriers in society for young children with SEND and their families.
• Supporting the national and local development of inclusive services for children.

What happens when you receive Portage?

Our home visitor will have an initial meeting with you to find out more about your child’s needs.

This will be followed by either weekly home-visits or online sessions for 6 months with a follow up session after 3 months to check on your progress.  The aim is to get a better understanding of your child’s needs and make an individual plan based on your needs and aspirations. This should help your child’s development and create a manageable everyday routine for the whole family.

A home visitor can also refer you to other services, with your consent, if they feel this could help your child.

The long-term goal of portage is to teach you to use different skills and tools to support your child’s development. We want to make sure you feel confident using these methods to keep supporting your child independently, to help them to be included in society, and to have a happy family life.

Early Help and Portage at LDN London

At LDN London we do free home visits and/ or online sessions to deliver our Early Help and Portage service to early years children (0-5 years old) with any delay, educational difficulty, or disability. We support children with or without a diagnosis.

The service is available to families living within Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.

Click this link to find out more and get support from our Early Help and Portage service. 

At LDN London we also offer: 

• Online sessions with parents.
• Workshops for parents about various topics, including: How to Communicate With My Child, Understanding and Managing Challenging Behaviour, Positive Parenting and more.
• Early Bird training: This is for parents whose child has received a diagnosis of autism and is aged under five. We run this programme to support parents of children with autism, with our trainers who are licensed by the National Autistic Society. The programme aims to support parents in the period between diagnosis and school placement, empowering and helping them facilitate their child’s social communication and behaviour. It helps parents to establish good practice in supporting their child at an early age.