Babies and children with atypical motor development are being missed, leading to delays in treatment and support with lifelong implications. Through their universal reach and acceptability and accessibility with families, health visiting teams are in a unique position to identify atypical motor development/ ‘red flags’ in babies and pre-school children.
The Motor Development Training programme is suitable for health visitors and skill mix teams, across all UK nations, to build advocacy for and understanding of motor development to prevent babies and children being missed. It addresses the fundamental requirements for all those working with parents and families to understand and recognise typical and atypical development, impact on the infant, their family and society, and to know when to refer on.
Ambassadors training
Any member of the health visiting team can become a Motor Development Ambassador to support their practice with families. To support shared learning, we recommend services send pairs of practitioners, one qualified and one member of the skill mix team, who can then together deliver the awareness session to their workforce.
- To raise awareness of typical motor development in term and preterm infants, as well as pre-school children.
- To improve practitioner knowledge and skills to identify early warning signs of high-risk infants and emerging signs of neuro/motor delay (this will include a breadth of motor conditions, including Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and cerebral palsy).
- To identify, name and describe body posture, movement and tone in an infant
- To increase knowledge and understanding in the recognition of typical and atypical motor development in children under 5 years of age
- To recognise amber and red flags of motor development and apply knowledge to guide important next steps
- To increase confidence to have sensitive conversations with families about motor development
- To increase confidence of sharing appropriate and relevant information with other professionals
- To raise awareness of a range of motor development conditions including Spinal Muscular Atrophy and Cerebral Palsy, and how to support parents
- To support health visiting team members to become place-based leaders, with evidence-based tools and learning resources to:
- raise local awareness of motor development and provide access to the online toolkit
- continue professional development
The programme is delivered in partnership with a specialist paediatrician. The session includes interactive group work, sharing typical and atypical development through review of video content, lived experience voices, consideration of structure holistic assessments, referral and support.
🏷️ Cost: £240 (iHV Member) / £265 (Non-member)
🕒 Duration: 5 hours
👥 Suitable for: Health visitors and skill mix
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