Portage - Home Teaching Service

Portage is a home based teaching service for pre-school children aged 0 - 5 with additional needs and their families.

Portage is part of the Early Years Intervention Service in Stoke-on-Trent and is accredited with the National Portage Association.

Our team of Portage Home Visitors are all Early Years Practitioners who have experience in understanding, recognising and developing the individual needs of the child.

To be eligible for Portage the child must live in Stoke-on-Trent and not attend an early years provider.

Portage Home Visitors work with the child and their families in the home from when a child is a few weeks old until they move into an early years setting or school. Portage Home Visitors make regular visits to the family. Families will be offered 6 Portage sessions after which the child's progress will be discussed and next steps will be planned.

The referral to Portage service can be found on this page.

We find out everything that the child can do across all areas of development and with the parent or carer decide on some long term teaching targets. We break the targets down into small steps and provide the activities to teach the targets. Each Portage session can last up to an hour and is full of stimulating and interesting activities to help the child to develop. Parents or carers join in the session with the child and Portage Home Visitor. All of the child's successes are celebrated.

We work with other professionals who are involved with the child and family.

Portage helps a parent help a child.

We also run Portage Playgroup sessions in different locations across the city, these are open to any family with a child known to the service.