AQW 40049/22-27

Mrs Michelle Guy
Alliance Party
Lagan Valley

Tabled Date: 06/02/2026
Answered On Date: 10/02/2026
Priority Written: No

Question:
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.

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).