Start with the three headings
Build it around three headings: what people like and admire, what matters to the child, and how best to support them. Write it with parents and the child’s key person, and review it as the child changes. Those three headings are the original one-page profile format, and they hold up for any age. A one-page profile is good practice at the SEN Support stage, the everyday level of help a setting gives before any plan. It needs no diagnosis, and it is not an EHCP or an old-style IEP.
Fill them in for a child who can’t self-report
This is the step the council pages and template sites skip. A 2 to 4 year old cannot fill in a form or tell you in writing what works, so for a pre-schooler you build the content from the people around the child and from what you observe day to day. The DfE’s early years guidance frames the profile as outlining the child as an individual: their strengths and interests, how they play, and the key support that makes the setting accessible. Write it in the first person, in the child’s voice, and source each heading like this:
- What people like and admire about me. Ask parents and the key person for the warm, specific things. “I beam when I find a worm in the garden.” Not a target, a genuine strength.
- What matters to me. The comfort object, the routine, the song at tidy-up time, the person who settles me. The detail a new adult would need on day one.
- How best to support me. The practical do and don’t. “Give me warning before we change activity;” “offer me a choice of two, not five.”
Involving parents this way is not just good manners. The law expects settings to have regard to the views, wishes and feelings of the child and parent, and to their taking part as fully as possible in decisions (Children and Families Act 2014, section 19; SEND Code of Practice 2015, Chapter 5). The profile is how that duty shows up in practice for a child too young to speak for themselves.
Keep it live and pass it on
A pre-schooler changes fast, so a profile written in September is often wrong by spring. Use the regular conversations you already have with parents and carers to keep it current, and date each version so anyone reading it knows how fresh it is. The profile should sit inside the child’s SEN Support record, and it should travel with the child at every transition: a move between rooms, a change of setting, and the move into Reception. That is when a single accurate page does the most work, because it hands the next adult what works before they have to learn it the hard way.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.