Early Development Groups

Our online Early Development Groups provide parents with the resources, knowledge, support and confidence to promote their child's development.

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Early intervention for our children can have a very beneficial impact which is why Down Syndrome UK created PADS Early Development Group (also known as PEGS). Our groups provide parents with the resources, knowledge, ongoing support and confidence to promote their child’s development. 

Access videos at your convenience and join 30 minute online sessions with up to five other parents, for specialist support and advice. Videos demonstrate research based early intervention activities that you can enjoy with your child as part of your everyday life at home. These cover communication, speech development, early numbers and reading, fine motor skills and memory.

Each family joins a group of up to six, with a designated Early Development Advisor (EDA) and you will meet on a regular ongoing basis, for peer support and encouragement as well as expert advice and guidance from your EDA. Our Early Years Development Parent Groups are suitable from when your little one is 6 months old and run all the way through to starting school. We subsidise the termly price to make it affordable for all families but we would never want a family not to be able to access services, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if needed.

Stage A

Aimed at children aged 6-12 months, born between 1 September 2025 and 28 February 2026 (starting school in September 2030). We run in line with school terms, so in September we welcome new cohorts into each stage.

Stage A runs entirely online. It begins with a one-to-one phone call with your Early Development Advisor (EDA), so they can get to know you and your child. This is followed by an introductory session, where your group and EDA get to know each other before starting the videos.

Each month, families watch a video by Becky Baxter with ideas to support their child’s development, followed by an online group Zoom session.

Reserving your place

Joining Stage A is a two-step process:

  1. Reserve your place today for £5, choosing the day and time that suits you. If your preferred group is full, we’ll add you to the waitlist.
  2. Confirm your place within a few days. We’ll email you a link to set up payment for the full course – £75 for the year, in three instalments of £25 (the first taken when you confirm, then two more automatically at three and six months).

Once you’ve confirmed your place, you’ll get full access to the online sessions, videos and your group chat.

We also run a January intake, Stage A2, for families whose child was too young to join the previous September.

Choose your day and time, and reserve your place below.

Stage A

Stages B, C , D and D repeat

Stages B, C and D bring together six families in each group. Every family starts the year with a one-to-one call with their EDA to talk through their child’s individual needs. The course then begins with an online group introductory session, where you’ll meet the other families in your group and find out what to expect over the coming term.

You’ll then have access to six videos each term, to watch before your fortnightly Zoom session with your EDA. Your child doesn’t need to be there for the sessions – don’t worry if it’s a nursery day or nap time, as the sessions are there to support you in helping your child’s development.

  • Stage B – born between 1 September 2024 and 31 August 2025
  • Stage C – born between 1 September 2023 and 31 August 2024
  • Stage D – born between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023
  • Stage D repeat – born between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022, for families who’d like to repeat Stage D

Reserving your place

Joining any of these stages is a two-step process:

  1. Reserve your place today for £5, choosing the day and time that suits you. If your preferred group is full, we’ll add you to the waitlist.
  2. Confirm your place within a few days. We’ll email you a link to set up payment for the full course – £120 for the year, in three instalments of £40 (the first taken when you confirm, then two more automatically at three and six months).

Total for the year: £125, including your £5 reservation.

Stage B
Stage C
Stage D
Stage D Repeat

*We ask families to contribute towards the cost of our subsidised services, but we never want cost to stand in the way of support – please get in touch if you need to.

*Please note the programme covers the full academic year. Cancelling your place at any point means withdrawing from the course.

Parent Testimonials

Rebecca

Mum to Violet
"I have been attending the Parent Groups online and obtained such valuable information about how our children with Down syndrome learn and lots of activities I can do with Violet to make learning fun. I ordered the resource pack and we’ve been using the phonics cards regularly. Recently Violet has started to recognise the ‘B’ and this is the sound she generally makes daily so we are now organising a bag full of things beginning with ‘B’ to help Violet to hopefully say some of them in time. We have learnt that repetition is absolutely key and visuals are a must. Thank you to DSUK for organising these groups."

Sam

Mother to Logan
"Last week we had our first portage session and yesterday we had a session with an excellent private SALT. They were both utterly blown away by Logan’s abilities, and also the types of activities we are working on. The SALT was delighted to hear all his babble and speech attempts and he was happy to show off how well he is doing at his phonics discrimination.I am totally convinced he is doing so well because of the amazing parent groups, which we have been able to access since he was 6 months old. So I just wanted to send a massive THANK YOU, to you and everyone involved in it. I personally would not be able to access anything like this locally and I am very very grateful."

Alice

Mother to Felicity
"We joined the parent groups when Felicity was a baby because we didn’t have a local group to access. Since then, a local group was set up but we chose to continue accessing the online sessions as they provided such great support (both educational and emotional!) and gave us so many ideas to support Felicity’s development. The resources are still going strong after over 3 years of regular use!"

Helen Bradley

DSUK Parent
"I really don’t know what we’d have done without DSUK's parent groups. It’s given us such a good understanding of how to support our little one and being in a group with other families has been amazing."
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Rebecca Carter

DSUK Parent
"We just got our resource pack – it is phenomenal. What a richly packed high-quality resource. All that DSUK do is of such quality – we are so lucky as a community to have DSUK, and the campaigning side you do. Lucky lucky lucky. Thank you!"

Pajae Chiam

DSUK Parent
"As a parent to a child with Down syndrome, I am beyond grateful for this provision that is among the few things out there that I can confidently say is easy to access, is affordable to access, easy to implement and most importantly, effective. I am beyond grateful to Becky, Nichola and the DSUK team for developing this resource. Thank you team!"

Course Leaders

Dr Becky Baxter headshot

Dr Rebecca Baxter

Becky Baxter is an extremely experienced speech and language therapist who has specialised in working with children and young adults with Down syndrome since 2007, working with hundreds of children in preschool settings over the course of her career.

Becky has devised and delivered a range of speech, language and communication services to parents and professionals including specialist early development groups for children from birth to school age, assessment and intervention for school-age children, communication groups for young adults, and training on the speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) associated with Down syndrome. In January 2024 Becky joined DSUK as our Director of Education and Speech and Language.

Sarah Holton

Sarah is a qualified teacher who specialises in supporting children with Down syndrome.  She has 18 years of primary teaching experience and has worked with many children with a variety of additional needs within a mainstream setting. Since 2013 Sarah has managed and delivered a Down syndrome specialist outreach service for Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. Sarah delivers training for professionals and parents on a variety of topics as well as running education workshops for pupils. 
 
Sarah has worked with DSUK for many years developing our Early Years Development Parent Groups, delivering regular behaviour bootcamps and Information Sharing Sessions on topics including early reading, number and choosing a preschool. More recently she has been involved in the development and delivery of our Early Years Development Programme for professionals. She is a mum to two children, one of whom has Down syndrome. 
Sarah Holton headshot

Preschool Parent Resource Packs

To get the most out of the course, we recommend purchasing DSUK’s preschool parent resource pack for just £35. In our Early Development Group videos, Becky & Sarah use similar resources in their videos as they demonstrate activities to parents.

These packs contain a range of resources to promote speech development, early reading and numeracy including speech sound cards, numicon cards, colour cards and lotto boards for matching. The resources will be of use throughout all stages and beyond!  

Purchase my pack
PEGS resource pack image showing all the cards you receive in your pack

Early Development Advisors

Our online sessions are delivered by Early Development Advisors (EDAs) who each have extensive experience working with children of preschool age with Down syndrome. All course recordings are complemented by follow-up Zoom sessions led by an Early Development Advisor who reviews the video making suggestions as to how parents can differentiate to extend or modify to meet or stretch an individual child’s ability. These sessions also provide a supportive forum at which parents can ask questions, share resources and encourage peers.

FAQs

Upon booking for each stage, a number of options for dates and times are given to you to choose from.

We don’t record the online sessions but our Early Years Development Parent Groups have a series of pre-recorded videos which you can watch.

We generally recommend starting in the stage relevant to your child’s correct age group

No worries, you can sign up to stage A2 or purchase the video only option.

Stage A starts from when your child is just 6 months old but you can start at any age, as long as the child is 6 months to 4 years old.

We recommend you purchase the video only option where you can cancel your subscription any time. Once you cancel you will lose access to your videos.

Our groups are designed as a year-long programme, so at this stage it isn’t possible to sign up on a term-by-term basis. When you register, you’re committing to the full academic year, with the cost simply split into three termly payments to make it more manageable.

We completely understand that it’s difficult to know what the year ahead might look like. If your circumstances were to change unexpectedly during the year, we’re always happy to have a conversation and would do our best to work something out, including cancelling your place and arranging a partial refund where appropriate. However, we’d encourage families to sign up with the intention of attending for the full year, as that’s how the programme has been designed and where families tend to get the greatest benefit.