AQW 40049/22-27 Written question to the Minister of Education
To ask the Minister of Education to detail the reason why non-statutory pre-school providers have a different route to refer children to Education Authority Local Impact Teams.
Asked by Michelle Guy MLA on 6 February 2026
- Answered
- Written
- Tabled
- 6 February 2026
- Answer due by
- 23 February 2026
- Answered
- 10 February 20264 days after tabling
- Department
- Department of Education
- Priority question
- No
Answer
The Education Authority (EA) has advised that:
Education and Library Board SEN services were originally designed and scoped to only support grant-maintained preschool settings where the Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code of Practice (CoP) applies fully.
As non-statutory providers do not uniformly apply the SEN CoP, their route to access EA SEN support services has remained predominantly via Community Paediatrics/Allied Health Professional referral to the Educational Psychology Service who then refer into the Local Impact Teams (LITs).