Plenty to declare

We are an inclusive early years centre in London, funded jointly by Islington education, regeneration and social services, and have six places for children with severe and complex needs. We know what it's like to receive a huge wad of medical information about a child and then be really worried about how to cope! We also knew, before we developed our passports, that primary schools were concerned about how they would manage with some of the children that we were sending on to them.

Although there is a need for specific information about medical conditions, behaviour strategies and so on, we felt that the existing systems of just sending on individual education plans, professional reports and a leaver's record, didn't really help staff to understand the child's needs quickly and easily. The reports can be written in language which seems to have very little to do with the daily experience of working with that child as a person. And they tend to focus on the child's difficulties and problems, rather than what the child can do and enjoys doing.