Guidance
This guideline covers supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of vulnerable children under 5 through home visiting, childcare and early education. It aims to optimise care for young children who need extra support because they have or are at risk of social or emotional problems.
NICE has also produced guidelines on social and emotional wellbeing in primary education and social and emotional wellbeing in secondary education.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- strategy, commissioning and review
- identifying vulnerable children and assessing their needs
- antenatal and postnatal home visiting for vulnerable children and their families
- early education and childcare
- delivering services
Who is it for?
- Commissioners and practitioners
- Members of the public
Is this guideline up to date?
Next review: 2017
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.