Individual FASD-Informed Support: Navigating Systems and Next Steps

Aug 4

3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Specialist one-to-one support for parents, carers and professionals navigating assessment, education, health, social care and home life.

These individual sessions provide space to talk through prenatal alcohol exposure, likely or confirmed FASD, and the day-to-day challenges affecting home, education and family life. Together, we consider what may be sitting beneath the presenting difficulties and identify practical strategies that can be tried, reviewed and adapted to suit the child or young person, their family and the wider support network.

Group programmes can be extremely valuable, but sometimes families need privacy, time and focused support for their own circumstances. These sessions offer a calm, personal space to make sense of what is happening, identify gaps in current support and decide what to do next - at a pace that feels manageable.

Support shaped around your situation

We can help you navigate education, health and social care systems, including preparing an application for an Education, Health and Care needs assessment, understanding an existing Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or considering changes where the plan no longer reflects the child or young person’s needs.

Where a local authority or service has not acted, communication has stalled or provision does not appear sufficiently FASD-informed, we can help you organise the evidence, identify gaps, prepare clear questions and consider practical next steps.

How we can help

Talk through day-to-day challenges and consider the strengths, needs and experiences that may sit beneath behaviour.
Understand prenatal alcohol exposure, likely or confirmed FASD, and overlapping neurodevelopmental needs.
Develop practical FASD-informed and low-demand strategies that can be tried, reviewed and adapted across home and education.
Prepare for school, SEND, EHCP, health, social-care, safeguarding and multi-agency meetings.
Review reports, plans and supporting evidence - with appropriate permission - to identify gaps and formulate a clear plan together.
Interpret an EHCP and suggest practical amendments, outcomes, provision and FASD-informed adjustments for discussion with the relevant professionals.
Prepare questions, evidence, timelines and next steps for an Education, Health and Care needs assessment or review.
Create clear communication guidance, risk-management approaches and consistent strategies for the team around the child.
Attend professional meetings by prior agreement and help the family or network communicate the child or young person’s needs clearly.
Explore routes to appropriate assessment and more joined-up support across education, health and social care.

The support is not prescriptive. We work with you at your pace and focus on the priorities that matter most to your family, placement, education setting or current plan.

We recognise that needs can look very different across home, nursery, school, alternative provision, college and the community. Where helpful, we work with the existing team - or help clarify who needs to be involved - so that approaches are consistent rather than expecting the child or young person to fit a standard model.

Sessions may explore processing speed, working memory, fluctuating capacity, communication, confabulation, suggestibility, fixed thinking, perseveration, regulation, demand avoidance, sensory needs, sleep, transitions and adaptive functioning. The emphasis is on understanding the need behind the presentation and finding achievable changes to communication, pace, demands, routines and the environment.

Access and funding

A formal diagnosis is not required. Where prenatal alcohol exposure is known or suspected, we can help consider possible assessment routes and bring together evidence of need. If there is already a diagnosis, we can support clearer, more joined-up planning across education, health, social care and family life.

Support may be privately funded or depending on individual circumstances and local arrangements considered through fostering, adoption or special guardianship support, children’s or disability services, safeguarding, Child in Need, Edge of Care, education, SEND or other relevant budgets.

Availability and eligibility should be confirmed with the responsible agency, school, service or local authority. After an initial conversation, we can usually provide a costed proposal shaped around the support required. If the support is privately funded we charge on a session by session basis.

Booking

Sessions are delivered online via Zoom at a time arranged with you. Because this is individualised work, we support a limited number of families and networks at any one time so that the service remains responsive and waiting times are kept as short as possible.

You do not have to navigate this alone. We are stronger together, and we will be alongside you - offering steady guidance, practical support and a clear way forward.

Due to demand, we are only able to support a small number of families at any one time.

However, if you are seeing this advert, we still have availability for a limited period where we we will contact you and do everything we can to keep waiting times minimal, so that our service remains FASD responsive when you need support.

To make enquiries or to book please email us: info@fasdinformed.co.uk

Image with thanks to our FASD Friend @CharlieMackesy