A one page profile is a summary of what is important to a person and how they need to be supported. It is used as an introduction to a person in educational settings or agencies working with young people. It creates a more person centred approach to supporting needs.

If your child has any additional needs a one page profile is a good place to start. The most important thing is that the people working with your child at nursery or school understand their needs. Depending on the setting you can have a number of individuals working with a child. A great way to easily share the key information about your child with all those individuals is a one page profile. This is an example of one used in early years settings.

The purpose of the one page profile is to create a snapshot of key points about your child in an easy to read format. Similar to a CV. It can be called whatever you like but essentially its a quick guide to the child.

If the child is able to contribute to the one page profile that is great. When we did my son’s he was at nursery and not speaking so I completed it with his key worker.

The first thing you need on the profile is your child’s name and a photo. Having a photo makes it easy for people to recognise the child it is about. You may also find that profile is used to support any funding or early years support applications. If this is the case a photo really helps people to see the child, it is much harder to reject support for a child you are looking at than just a name on a page.

A one page profile can be for any child and some settings will have them for every child. They are particularly useful for children who may have differences that carers need to be aware of.

This is a lovely section where you get to highlight all the great things about your child. It is very easy to become focused on challenges your child has but it is really important to keep in mind the positives as these will often be the key to managing and overcoming the challenges. What is your child good at? What do you and other family or friends love about them?

In this part you can record what your goals are. It may be short term such as becoming able to functionally communicate, or long term for example becoming fully independent. For me I just want my kids to be happy and healthy and this is an ideal place to record that.

So this should record the things your child loves. What do they enjoy? What do they like to do? This could be music, it could be puzzles what are the toys that motivate them?

It is good to include activities for example playing outside, messy play or playing with dolls. This is where people can look for ideas on what to do / how to interact with your child.

Here we can record those key bits of information that will really help your child and those working with them. What do they need from the people working with them. This is where you need to think about the challenges your child has examples may be language, sharing with others, going to the toilet or eating.

It is also great to highlight how best to support your child and this may be an area you need help with. Staff at the nursery or school should be able to help with this. My son was struggling with moving from activities in different rooms, this was because he didn’t understand he was going outside or to lunch etc. It was later suggested to us that he needed visual supports so this was added to his profile.

One page profiles can work really well for primary and secondary schools too. You might want to include tips like not asking the child the answer to a question unless they have their hand up or highlighting that eye contact is difficult. Here are a few other titles you may want to use for your profile:

Here is a completed example one page profile for a young child:

Here is a blank copy you can print out –

Kelly over at Its a Tink Thing has a great editable template you can download.

Sheffkids also has some templates you can use.

Share your profile with everyone working with your child. This could include speech and language therapists, nursery or school staff and grandparents. If at secondary school you may want to make lots of A5 size copies to hand out to all your child’s teachers. The more information anyone caring for or working with your child has the better those interactions and relationships will be.

It is also really important to keep the profile updated. Even now that my son has an Education Health and Care Plan the one page profile provides a summary. Trust me not many people will read the full education plan.

I hope this has been helpful, you may be interested in my guide to the top autism therapies for young children which is free when you sign up to my monthly newsletter.