FASD-Informed 'Understanding the Whole Child'

Sep 19

4 min read

Updated: Sep 26

Individualised FASD-responsive training and consultation for the network supporting one child, young person or adult

When support feels stuck, risk is increasing or standard approaches are not creating sustainable change, this bespoke programme helps the people around one individual understand what is driving their presentation - and agree practical changes that can make a difference straight away.

Designed for families and professionals supporting someone who has prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), who 'is at risk of' or has confirmed Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and co-occurring complex needs, the programme connects understanding across home, education, health, care and community life.

Course overview

This child-centred programme brings key adults around one individual together to build a shared, FASD-informed understanding of their strengths, needs and day-to-day presentation. Rather than delivering generic training, we work from the person’s real context. Their developmental profile - including asynchronous development or dysmaturity - communication, sensory and interoceptive needs, relationships, routines, learning environment, safeguarding concerns and current plans shape every element of the programme.

We begin by speaking with the carer or parent (where appropriate), recognising them as the expert in their child or young person. Their knowledge of strengths, needs, patterns, triggers and what already helps is used to shape relevant training for the team around the child in education, social care and/or health and therapy. With the appropriate permissions, we also review relevant clinical and education information to help shape the sessions and formulate a plan together.

Bringing lived experience and professional expertise together is best practice: it creates a shared understanding, removes assumptions, builds consistency across settings and makes meaningful, sustainable change more likely.

The aim is to help the network become a reliable “external brain”: providing consistent prompts, scaffolding, re-teaching and environmental accommodation when working memory, adaptive functioning or executive load make everyday tasks harder.

Participants leave with a shared framework, clearer priorities and realistic practical take away strategies that can be used across settings with greater confidence and consistency.

What this programme brings to your team?

Practical take away strategies tailored to the child or young persons neurobehavioural profile, strengths, adaptive functioning and current needs.
Clear, consistent approaches across home, education, health, care and community settings, so adults can provide an effective external brain through prompts, repetition, re-teaching and scaffolding.
Tools to notice somatic signals and signs that the person is nearing their threshold, reduce allostatic load, lower executive demands and use Low Arousal approaches to support affect regulation and prevent avoidable escalation.
Adaptable resources using declarative language, visual and kinesthetic cues, and structured preparation to support communication, routines, transitions and set-shifting.
A shared language for discussing fluctuating capacity, sporadic mastery, verbal masking, suggestibility, confabulation and perseveration within multidisciplinary, safeguarding and review processes.
Agreed priorities and realistic next steps that the network can put into practice immediately.

Resources are selected and adapted to the individual context, so the team leaves with relevant materials rather than a generic toolkit.

Who this programme is for?

School, alternative-provision and college staff, including SENCOs, designated teachers, leadership and specialist education teams.
Social workers, virtual school teams and professionals supporting children in care and previously looked-after children.
Health, therapy, mental-health and learning-disability professionals.
Personal assistants, enablers, key workers, advocates and community-based support providers.
Professionals contributing to Team Around the Child or Family, Child in Need and safeguarding arrangements.

From FASD-informed to FASD-responsive practice

FASD-responsive practice looks beyond presenting behaviour to consider the possible neurodevelopmental effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with this person?”, the network asks, “What does this person need, and what can we change around them?”

This shift helps adults interpret behaviour as communication and recognise when working-memory demands, executive load, sleep debt or reduced capacity may be affecting what the person can manage. It supports thoughtful responses to confabulation, suggestibility, perseveration and verbal masking; closer attention to interoception and other somatic signals; and expectations based on adaptive functioning rather than chronological age alone.

The result is a more FASD-informed, Low Arousal and trauma-informed approach that uses environmental accommodation, declarative language, scaffolding and re-teaching to keep support safeguarding-focused and achievable.

Booking and additional support

FASD Informed™ education is delivered by an experienced, qualified team offering a bespoke service to help families, settings and organisations become more FASD responsive.

To discuss the child, young person or adults needs or to reserve placeholder diary dates, please email info@fasdinformed.co.uk

Additional support is available through online one-to-one consultation, follow-up review and attendance at professional meetings for stuck or complex situations requiring thoughtful, out-of-the-box problem solving.

Funding

Depending on the child, setting and local arrangements, training or consultation may be funded through routes such as Child in Need funding, safeguarding budgets, child-in-care or children-looked-after funding, EHCP provision, Pupil Premium, Pupil Premium Plus, Personal Education Plan funding, core SEND or notional SEN allocation, high-needs funding, virtual school funding, designated teacher budgets, or staff CPD and INSET budgets. Availability and eligibility should be confirmed with the relevant school, service or local authority.