Help from professionals

For primary school applications, our professionals can support you with:

• Appeals about school places, including if your children have been offered different schools
• Decisions about whether your children should be together or apart. Start by using our checklist and sharing our letter with your headteacher. If the school isn't listening to the needs of both you and your children when deciding whether they should be together or apart, we can support you with this.
• Support if a school isn't recognising each child's individual needs. Before this, you can share our individuality factsheet and teacher's guide for treating multiples as individuals.
• Part-time attendance, deferring or delaying a school start, after you've read our guidance and you still need help with the process

If your children were born prematurely, you may also find Bliss's guidance on delaying or deferring school entry helpful.

Our professionals can support you with:

• Choosing schools (how many choices you can make is different in each local authority)
• Applying for secondary school places if your children are educated outside their normal age group
• Preparing for results day if your children have similar abilities and only one may be offered a place after an entrance exam
• Appeals
• Support if teachers aren't identifying each child's individual needs
• Support if teachers are making comparisons between your children
• Differences in ability
• Differences in development and achievement, including for boy/girl twins

Please note, for selective and grammar school applications and appeals we can only support you if your children have achieved consistently the same academically for several years and you have evidence of this.

Our professionals can help with:

• Special educational needs and EHC plans
• Severe learning difficulties
• Profound and multiple learning difficulties
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Dyslexia
• Emotional and behavioural difficulties at school or nursery that affect a child or young person's progress

Our professionals can help with:

• Listening and attention
• Social interaction at any age
• Understanding language
• Expressive language
• Speech, including late talking, unclear speech and difficulty forming sounds
• Specific difficulties, such as stammering
• The EHC plan application process

You can also read more about language development [LINK NEEDED].

Please note our speech and language therapists can only support families where your twins, triplets or more are aged two or over. If you're looking for a private speech and language therapist, you can contact the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice or ask your GP for a referral.

If you're looking for support with typical, age-appropriate behaviour, please contact our helpline. It's open Monday to Friday from 10am to 1pm and 7pm to 10pm.

Our family therapists are qualified psychotherapists or clinical psychologists. They can support with:

• Severe behaviour, including aggression
• Relationship difficulties
• Emotional wellbeing within the family, including during adolescence
• Toilet training if it's starting to affect family life
• Identity and friendship worries
• Adult twins who've lost their twin
• Couples where one partner is a twin
• How parents are feeling after the birth of their twins, triplets or more

Please note our family therapists can only offer one-off phone support and signposting to other resources. They can't offer face-to-face support or long-term counselling.