This paper describes the development of the Dynamic needs assessment tool. The tool aims to support early identification of children and young people (CYP) who may have a combination of unrecognised neurodevelopmental needs, special educational needs and disability (SEND), mental health needs or community support needs. It is intended to be used in a variety of non-specialist settings. The purpose of this study is to create a tool which identifies need across four key areas and signpost professionals to the relevant areas of support.
An audit of the adapted Thrive model for CYP (Wee et al., 2021) indicated a need for a stratification tool to support earlier recognition of intellectual needs. This led to a group of practitioners, including specialists in special educational needs and neurodevelopmental conditions working collaboratively to complete a Delphi process. This identified factors which would help identify need in 4 key areas of neurodiversity.
The Delphi process resulted in 26 factors being identified, which were considered using face and construct validity tool before being used to create the DNAT SEN tool. This tool can be used in universal settings to support identifying and formulating the overall profile of needs of CYP before offering guidance to support at an early stage for those with SEN or neurodivergence.
This tool bridges the gap in identifying unmet needs, previous tools have produced a single “RAG” rating, looking at the level of need. However, this tool considers four main areas: Neurodiversity, Special Educational needs, Community Needs and Mental Health Needs.
