Children living in some of the most disadvantaged areas of England have benefited from increased speech and language support thanks to investment through the Early Years Local Government Programme.
The £8.5 million scheme was launched in 2018 to support local services to tackle developmental gaps in language and literacy skills for disadvantaged five-year-olds. Evaluation of the programme has found that early years professionals now have more skill and confidence in identifying and supporting families in need and better working partnerships across different services – all of which has led directly to better speech and language outcomes for children and families.
The programme has two strands:
- the Early Years Social Mobility Peer Review Programme (see box)
- the Early Outcomes Fund (EOF), which funded eight year-long projects on supporting early language development across 27 councils, including Halton, Staffordshire and Luton.
Halton Borough Council, Cheshire
TALK Halton is made up of speech and language therapists, early years practitioners and the 0-19 health team working together to ensure all young children are given the chance to reach their potential in speech, language and communication.
It received £583,000 of EOF funding, much of which was used to introduce the WellComm toolkit and train early years practitioners in how to use it, with the aim of identifying and supporting children earlier, along with reducing the numbers needing referrals, through early interventions.
‘Early years settings and the health service are now working with WellComm, which means they have the same “language” with which to discuss children’s speech, language and communication,’ says project lead Claire Smith.
‘To start, we conducted a questionnaire around the skills of the early years workforce and were horrified by how low the levels of confidence were in supporting speech, language and communication. In contrast, their competence was very good, so through the project we needed to look at how to increase confidence.
‘The WellComm toolkit works well as an identification tool, but it is also good because it includes The Big Book of Ideas, a collection of more than 1,000 play-based activities, that practitioners and parents can use.
‘Through training we shared how to use the toolkit along with an EYFS pack of basic language intervention activities that we had written to support children’s listening, early language skills and understanding. We wanted to reassure practitioners that they already understood what to do, we were just joining the dots.’
The Covid-19 outbreak forced training online, but rather than numbers dropping, many practitioners found the training more accessible. WellComm is being used in 68 out of 69 local settings, and pre-recorded sessions will shortly be available for practitioners, particularly childminders, to view at their convenience.
Social media has also been used successfully to offer support to parents, with an average reach of 1,225 people per post.
Results from the first round of WellComm assessments in November 2019 indicated that half of children tested had an identified significant or moderate speech, language and communication difficulty, much higher than the 20 per cent norm in areas of deprivation. In spring 2020 there was an improvement, with 46 per cent having an identified difficulty, although fewer settings submitted data because of the pandemic.
‘Practitioners are saying that the introduction of WellComm has changed their practice, which is a big achievement,’ says Ms Smith. ‘Children’s Centres have reviewed all groups to make them more communication-friendly as a result of TALK Halton. All teams have refocused work on supporting children’s speech, language and communication as a priority, which is amazing. The funding was limited to a year, which is disappointing, but when we are back in our roles, we feel the work can continue because the foundations are in place.’
Staffordshire County Council with Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Central to the project in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent was sharing and scaling up best practice across the local authorities. Collectively the neighbouring local authorities used their £781,000 EOF funding to focus on:
- increasing early years practitioners’ knowledge and skills in early identification and intervention through training delivered by speech and language therapy teams – 169 have now attended training
- introducing an accredited SENCo qualification to improve the confidence of practitioners in the role
- raising awareness, engagement and action with parents about supporting early communication through a local email campaign based on the national Hungry Little Minds programme; focused play sessions and increased support through a volunteer co-ordinator in Staffordshire and an outreach worker in Stoke.
Findings from an evaluation by the Centre for Research in Early Childhood includes:
- Strong evidence that practitioners have improved their practice to better support young children’s communication and language development.
- The SENCo training has led to practitioners reporting development in their professional vocabulary and ability to talk with parents and other professionals. Their enhanced knowledge and skills have begun to impact on their daily practice with children.
- Support from the volunteer co-ordinator and outreach worker shows early signs of successfully overcoming barriers for some parents to engage in programmes offered to them.
- The personalised digital campaign target of 1,000 parents has been exceeded with currently 1,317 subscribers.
While it is too early to evidence the impact of the parent-focused initiatives, anecdotally, participating parents report increased confidence in supporting their child’s speech and language development and a transformation in the home learning environment to provide language-enriched play and more talk. Wider outcomes include enhanced well-being, social interaction, self-confidence and self-worth.
Further phases of work are planned to build on the successes of the EOF initiative for continued improvement in children’s communication and language outcomes.
Luton Borough Council, Bedfordshire
Luton’s ‘Talking Takes Off’ speech, language and communication project received £452,000 in EOF funding.
‘Local need has been addressed through upskilling the workforce, use of the identification screening tool and providing a pathway that supports parents and children at the earliest point. Access to a speech and language therapist for early support and advice has also helped reduce inappropriate referrals into the Speech Therapy Team,’ says Flying Start implementation manager Christine Rogers.
‘Interventions such as Talking Takes Off for communication groups offered in the Flying Start Children’s Centres have supported parents with ideas and advice and good role-modelling. Invitations to the groups are given by health professionals following a child’s two-year development check where additional support is identified on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire. Other interventions such as “Lift Off to Language” are offered in maintained nurseries and childcare settings providing targeted support for small groups of children.’
Another success of the programme was being able to further develop the area’s ‘train the trainer’ model for the delivery of ICAN speech and language training. Trained ICAN communication ambassadors disseminate information around typical communication development, how to spot children who are struggling, and signposting where to go for support in the area. It is found that they manage to use informal networks to engage with otherwise hard-to-reach families.
Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM)
A new toolkit which can identify 94 per cent of young children with early language needs and suggest accompanying intervention is now being rolled out to health visitors as part of the Government’s social mobility strategy.
The Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM), developed by Newcastle University for Public Health England, replaces the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) and will be used for children attending their health visitor reviews at 24 and 30 months of age.
‘Early speech and language delays can be a worry for parents and professionals alike and researchers have been looking for ways to accurately identify children who would benefit from help. The research suggests the ELIM does just this and more accurately than others,’ says James Law, professor of speech and language sciences at Newcastle University’s School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, who led the study.
‘The key is for parents and other professionals, such as health visitors and early years practitioners, to work together to find out what would most help the child. For children with the most marked difficulties, this may be speech and language therapy, but it may be finding out more about the languages the child uses or pointing them to resources that help to better understand the child’s needs.’
Support offered ranges from online resources to introducing parents to exercises that they can do with their children, tailored to family need.
Prof Law believes ELIM is more ‘intuitive for parents’ than the ASQ and also acknowledges the important role of observation and talking to parents. ‘These are not screening tests, but we are trying to make the measure better and pick out those children who need attention, and it also empowers health visitors to use their own judgement.’
He hopes that the toolkit will ‘create a conversation’ across all professionals supporting young children and help parents to engage with their child’s development at an early stage.
MORE INFORMATION
https://hungrylittleminds.campaign.gov.uk
https://ican.org.uk
