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Three-year-old Hamza was like a ‘whirlwind’ when he started attending Elmwood Infant and Nursery School in Croydon, South London in September 2017. Assistant head teacher and inclusion leader Helen Walsh says staff soon noticed that Hamza – who is British-born to Somali-speaking Muslim parents and has Black African ethnicity – was experiencing difficulties in interacting with other children, settling down to activities and had little speech or language. He would growl when he was unhappy, and sometimes when approached.
‘We aim to identify children with SEND as early as we can in order to give them the best possible outcomes,’ says Ms Walsh. ‘Our first aim was to find out whether or not he spoke his first language at home, and whether his parents had any concerns about his development, so we were quick to speak to his mum, but this was not easy because she has limited English.’
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