The term “early years” covers from birth to five years old. These years are crucial for children with GRI conditions, and can be the most fragile in terms of their health and development.

If a young child has a medical condition or GRI diagnosis they may be referred by a health professional to the appropriate services or specialist early years provisions such as a social worker, educational psychologists or speech and language therapists or portage home-visiting service.

Early year settings, such as nurseries and playgroups also have an important role to play and have obligations to make adjustments to include children with health and developmental conditions. Funding should be made available to them by local authorities to support this