Research and policy
Policy: TTYB submission to the Bercow Review
1 Mar 2008
Talk To Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy Trust, welcomes the review into services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. All children deserve the best possible support to ensure that their communication skills develop well, whilst those with specific problems need prompt professional help.
Talk To Your Baby (TTYB) exists to encourage parents and carers to communicate more with children from birth to three. We wish to highlight to the Review the need for all parents to have a better knowledge of normal communication development in babies and young children, in order that they are able to identify any emerging problems with their own child, whilst providing them with reassurance and eliminating unnecessary concern; if you do not know what to expect from your child, how can you notice delay or any other problems? Too many parents simply do not know that good communication only happens with adult interaction, and are not aware of the importance of parents taking on this important role. All professionals working with parents of young children need to be trained to support early communication, modelling to parents how to communicate well with their babies and young children.
The Review has a work stream on strategic leadership, to highlight the priority nationally of good speech, language and communication needs. We would suggest that this national priority should extend to cover all children, regardless of any identified speech, language and communication need. All children need speech, language and communication skills. Therefore, support for acquiring these skills needs to be universal, embedded in wider support for children’s development and understood within the concept of a positive childhood, expressed in the Children’s Plan. Progressive support for those with specific issues needs to be built on this universal provision.
We would also like to suggest that a new category of professional is created to encompass the preventative role recently undertaken by some speech and language therapists (SLTs) through Sure Start and other early years projects. Many of these multi agency projects are short term and under threat from budget cuts; their preventative role is insufficiently valued.
Whilst new children’s centres may have SLTs as part of the staff mix, there is no statutory requirement for this to happen, and many of those therapists will have a full clinical workload and be unable to spend time on more preventative work, or have time to train or support other suitable staff. A new speech and communication supporter would fit well with the current focus on the parenting agenda and the roll out of parent educators, as well as the current focus on children’s workforce development, and all the work around the introduction of the early years foundation stage, thus providing an integrated approach to prevention of speech, language and ultimately literacy problems.
It is not well known to parents that they can self-refer to get an appointment to see a speech and language therapist, and many would not think of it because they would not recognise their child was exhibiting speech delay or some other impairment. They are also likely to think that unless their child exhibits a more visible problem, like a stammer, they do not need therapy. And those that do seek a SLT referral are then frustrated by the long wait even for an assessment. A well promoted open referral system (drop in service) providing some form of rapid screening should be universal.
We believe that this preventative role is inhibited by the name of speech “therapist”, implying that you need to have something wrong to be seen by a speech professional. With a better understanding of this aspect of child development, parents could be supported to provide early active engagement with their babies, and be confident in this role. A trained SLT to act as a speech and communication supporter available in all children’s centres could specifically champion knowledge of communication development, could assist other centre staff by training them to incorporate good early communication activity into their own work, and could encourage good play and interaction between parents and their children. The skills could be spread to cover other early years settings (e.g. private nurseries) throughout the children’s centre reach area.
Most people believe that learning to talk will just happen, perhaps because no one can remember how they learned to talk themselves. They think that talk will emerge one day. They would not see any need to go to a class to learn about talking, so need more subtle approaches to gain this vital knowledge, such as encouragement to sing nursery rhymes, ideas about how to share books, and in particular modelling of play, and an understanding of the relevance of pretend play.
We would therefore argue strongly for a positive and holistic approach to speaking and communication support for all children. We believe that this way of working would make a clear and understandable distinction between universal speech and language support and selective speech and language therapy, and would help to decrease the numbers of children exhibiting poor communication skills on entry to school. This would, in turn, allow clinical therapists to spend more time with those children who have an acquired or inherited disorder that needs expert therapy.
It would be ideal if all parents knew about early years communication from the start. TTYB has been campaigning through the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for the English KS4 curriculum to include, even briefly, the study of the acquisition of language in order that young people can have a better understanding of how they originally learned to communicate, so that when they become parents themselves they will know the importance of their role as their child’s communication guide. (Currently the study of language acquisition is an optional module on some syllabuses for English Language A level.)
We believe that it is this lack of knowledge and understanding of the basics of early child communication development that is contributing to the poor communication skills of children arriving at nursery and school, with all the problems that causes for their social and emotional development, as well as for their future learning. As was highlighted in the Rose Review, “listening and speaking are the roots of reading and writing”, and “prime communication skills are important in their own right and central to children’s intellectual, social and emotional development”.
We believe that the speech and communication support we are suggesting will be more clearly recognisable as a social and educational benefit, and therefore will be more likely to attract the necessary funding through joint commissioning. Currently, health budget cuts of SLT posts are not in step with educational needs; this issue is so important that it requires the joint attention of both health and children’s services managers and their budgets, sustained over the long term.
Liz Attenborough, December 2007
Bercow Interim Report - Review of services for Children and Young People (0-19) with Speech, Language and Communication Needs
The interim report looks at themes emerging from evidence contributed to the Bercow Review, as well as from visits to areas across the country and meetings with a variety of people. The review summarises why communication skills matter:
"The subject matters because SLC are the foundation life skills for the 21st century, the indispensible prerequisites for children and young people to learn, to achieve and to make friends.
“Nobody should underestimate the significance of this statement. It is not the expression of a private view. It is not a statement of value. It is a formal, public and multilateral declaration by UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Health Organisation which lists communication as one of the ten core life skills. Some would say that the ability to communicate is a precious gift. Others would say it is a human right. Every one of us would say that communication is at the core of all social interaction. With the power of communication, the individual has the chance to engage and thrive. Without the power of communication, the individual may face isolation and a struggle to survive."
(Interim Report, p.11)
Download a summary of the conclusions and next steps (pdf) - by TTYB
To download the Interim Report visit the DCSF website.
