Early childhood intervention services provide a broad range of support for children with disability from birth up to (but not including) 6 years of age, and their families.

These services support young children and their families to be active members of their community through the provision of therapies, learning and play based activities, and opportunities to interact with peers.

Services also support and empower families through the provision of training, information, referral and support coordination, and help families to develop formal and informal networks.

Early childhood intervention services may be provided in the places in the community that every young child would access, for example preschools and child care settings.

Early childhood intervention programs are encouraged to adopt:

• family centred approaches
• collaborative service partnerships
• inclusive service delivery
• improved access and culturally appropriate and respectful approaches
• strengths based approaches

Finding a service

ADHC regional Information, Referral and Intake officers are able to help identify early childhood intervention services.

Parent Line NSW is a 24 hour, seven days a week telephone counselling, information, referral and support service for parents and carers of children aged 0-18 in NSW. Parent Line NSW can be contacted on 1300 1300 52.

Families can also contact Diagnosis Support Workers who provide a range of supports for families of children with disability or developmental delay during the time of diagnosis. This support includes information and assistance to access mainstream and disability specific services that are best suited to achieving the family’s goals. Families can contact:

• Northcott on 02 9890 0100 - covering the Central Coast, Hunter, Cumberland/Prospect, Nepean, Northern Sydney, Far North Coast, Mid North Coast and New England areas.
• CareWest on 1300 227 393 - covering Central West, Far West and the Riverina-Murray area.
• Mission Australia on 02 4824 4000- covering Illawarra and the Southern Highlands.
• Learning Links on 8568 8200 – covering the Inner West, South East Sydney, South West Sydney.

Training packages

Does this child need help? is a training package developed and delivered by Early Childhood Intervention Australia (NSW Chapter) to help staff working in early childhood services respond when they have concerns about a child’s development.

It also explains what early childhood intervention can achieve, and what it means for children, their families and the community.