Cracking Communication conference: Manchester

King’s House Conference Centre in Manchester will hold this exciting event on Tuesday 13th November.

There will be information and advice to help schools support outcomes for all children and young people through enhancing and promoting good language and communication skills. This conference follows on from our successful inaugural Cracking Communication conference held in London and will bring together the leading experts in speech, language and communication from the voluntary, education and private sectors.

The aim of the conference is to link together policy, evidence and practice in order to support schools to identify children with speech, language and communication needs and to enable all children to achieve their full potential through better communication skills. We are very excited about this event, with a fantastic range of speakers including:

• Anne Duffy, HMI, Ofsted
• Geoff Lindsay, the Better Communication Research Programme
• Wendy Lee, Professional Director, The Communication Trust

Keynote speeches
Will link together policy, evidence and practice and you can view the timetable for the day .

Workshops
Will focus on practical advice and tools that will enable school leaders to consider a range of practical solutions, based on good practice and clear evidence for their own individual communities.

Exhibition
Will also be on offer throughout the day to give participants the opportunity to network and see resources firsthand.

The conference will be suitable for the following audience:

• Primary and Secondary head teachers and deputy head teachers
• Curriculum leads, leads for teaching and learning and anyone implementing National Curriculum changes in their schools
• SENCO's
• Commissioners in the education and health sectors

Register now!
Book your place now to take advantage of the early bird rate of £150 per delegate
If you would like to register for the event, please visit www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/conference or contact Jo Bolton jbolton@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk

 

New director for Communication Trust

The Communication Trust, a coalition of nearly 50 voluntary organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication, has welcomed its new Director, Anne Fox. Fox, who previously worked at NCT as Head of Corporate Communications, will lead the organisation through its next strategic period. 

Anne Fox, Director of The Communication Trust, says: "I am delighted to join The Communication Trust at this exciting and challenging time. Moving forwards, the Trust will work to ensure children’s communication is a burning issue. We will do this by sharing what works for all children and those  with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) to the widest possible audience.  

“Good communication skills are key in the 21st  century and every child should have the opportunity to be understood. In five years, the Trust has achieved so much and we have trail blazed the way for collaborative working with our consortium members. Our challenge now is to build on the success of the  Hello campaign and to leave no stone unturned as we make the clear link between communication skills and life chances.” 

Adrian Hosford, Chair of The Communication Trust, said: "We are delighted to welcome Anne to The Communication Trust. Anne brings with her a wealth of experience around collaborative working and uniting different groups under a common cause.  Her valuable expertise and leadership will drive the Trust forwards and help us achieve the best outcomes for children, young people and their families.”

Help pre-schoolers' communication skills... urgent action required!!

Middle-class children hear 33 million words by the time they start school - 23 million more than poorer children of the same age, a Government adviser has revealed.

According to Frank Field, the Governments advisor on poverty, collapse in parenting skills in poor homes with unstable families blights a child's prospects by the time they are three-years-old.

In a report on child deprivation, he said that wealthier children from stable homes will have heard 440,000 more positive comments from their parents than children from dysfunctional families by the age of three. As speech & language therapists know, the level of communication between a parent and child has a more drastic impact on a child's future than any other factor including class, race or income.  The findings are only set to continue for future generations if action is not taken as young people brought up  in dysfunctional families have no experience of being a good parent when it comes to raising their own children.

Mr Field aims to 'break into this cycle of deprivation so the whole thing is not automatically handed on the next generation'. He is calling for a 'parenting curriculum' at schools where pupils will learn about child care as well as a formal 'rites of passage' ceremonies attended by local mayors for children not christened. 

Some of the latest research is very damning as it shows that youngsters who were behind when they started school never caught up to their peers. He blamed the situation on the low aspirations of parents trapped in poverty where no one in the family has worked for generations. These parents do not bother to play with, talk to or read to their children. Mr Field’s study warned that children’s life chances were almost entirely determined before they even got to school.

His report called for health visitors to measure children’s behaviour and communication skills from the age of two to catch youngsters who were falling behind in their development.

The reason I started Smart talkers Pre-School groups was an attempt to address some of these issues see www.smarttalkers.org.uk


What do you think? I'd love to hear your comments.

SL World: The global bulletin for SLT/SLPs: issue 3 out now!

As for most mothers who work, it's been very hectic trying to manage a business with the school holidays so I haven't had the time to tell people about the latest edition of the on-line magazine. It's the third publication of the magazine by and for speech and language professionals across the world.


Bea Staley who is working in Kenya sent in a lovely account of what it's like to be a volunteer in the country.  She wrote from the heart and apologised for it being too long. It was so interesting, however, I couldn't possibly cut it. If you read it you'll see what I mean. I think many of us would love to do something similar but are hindered by the restraints of family life ... for now.


There's a great article by Ben Zimmerman, for whom I have a great deal of respect for his work with feeding.  He's written about behavioural analysis of the problems. Also on the feeding theme, Jodie Corbett has written about her work with Vitalstim. I was interested to read this as Sumathi Sinnapan, a friend of mine living in Stafford is the only British therapist I know who is qualified and licensed to use the technique here. She has an uphill struggle to persuade the UK powers that be that it's a technique that works but Jodie's article makes it seem the right way forwards for many.


There are inspiring pieces by Eric Raj who likens SLT/SLP to ninjas.... (yes, it does make sense when you read it!), Stephanie Staples on team work, useful techniques from Craig Selinger, multi-cultural working in Holland, a SLaC special from Mary MountStephens and a celebration of 50 years in the profession for Franky Shepperson. Plus news from all over.


To subscribe and then be able to access the previous two issues too, it's £24 for a year or £12 for students. The price is a full 12 months from the date you fill in the form. www.slworldbulletin.com


If you have anything you would like considering for inclusion for the October magazine please let me know. Human communication is the most fascinating subject possible and how we can help when things go wrong needs to be shared as widely as possible.

Comments please: What can we do to address the problems??

The last post looked at the fact that children's communication skills are declining and the link between lack of interaction with babies. Many people will have read it and dismissed the ideas because they feel that interacting with  babies is an innate skill and doesn't need to be thought about. The reality, however is that a huge part of society are not interacting adequately with their babies and children. This is not restricted to poorer areas of socio-economic development either as some of the worst cases of language deprivation I have seen are from high income families.


I watched some of Friday's Comic Relief's many videos of abject poverty and utter despair..... and yet ALL the parents were interacting with their babies! There was even an extremely depressing one where the mother was dying. She had no reserves to eat or stand but was still smiling and mouthing to her baby (she had too little energy to vocalise). Unfortunately both mother and baby died after the filming (I'm not watching next year as its too sad..... although I think I said that last year too!).


So why are we failing to do this now? What has changed in the West in 21st century? Are our stresses different, do we take things for granted, have we had parents who didn't bother either so our brains didn't fully develop the area necessary for interaction, empathy and higher level skills?  We can observe the problem but what is the solution? Website like 'talk to your baby' are great but how do we get the people who need to know to read it? Every time I do a  Baby Talk group it attracts those who a already know they want to learn more. The Hello Campaign is only being accessed by those who know about it.


What do you think? I'd love to hear your views please?

Another chance to see the babies at Landywood!!

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Related articles

• Baby Parenting Skills : How to Put a Baby to Sleep With a Pacifier (parenting-success.com)

'Parents ARE to blame for many of the speech, language and communication delays' the headlines should have said!

Unfortunately, the press took the leading paragraph from the Hello press release literally (see our last blog post) and gave the parents the impression that it is OK to let your children watch TV for hours on end and that a lack of  interaction with your children has no bearing on their communication progress. Headlines such as 'TV not to blame', 'We cant blame parents' are both mis-leading and mis-guided. They actually had a negative effect rather than positive.


What the Hello campaign was alluding to, were the long term difficulties that around 7% of children will have. These are severe delays or disorders which happen through no fault of anyone, least of all the parents.


However, up to 50% of children in some areas do not have sufficient levels of spoken language to begin to learn written language as they start school. These difficulties can be transient so that they will improve with the right help. These families are definitely the cause of their delay. Children who are baby-sat by a screen, whether that be PC, computer or PS3. A lack of proper interaction with them means that children don't learn rules of conversation or social skills that go alongside. Studies have shown that babies do not become babbling by chance, if they are not communicated with, they wont try to practise using the sounds of language. Babies will even stop crying if no one responds when they do. A child won't learn vocabulary if they don't hear the words. The way we learn language is by being exposed to it repeatedly.


We are facing a crisis yet no-one seems to understand. I was hoping that the Hello campaign would hi-light the issues and promote good practise, yet January's theme was just that and I didn't see any headlines to that effect, did you? I can spend hours on this, my personal soap box topic, because it's something I believe is vitally important. What sort of society are we going to become if our communication skills are falling apart?

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Related articles

• Parents 'not guilty' over speech (bbc.co.uk)

Hello in February: Let's talk about long term speech & language difficulties

One in six parents in Britain believe that the most common cause of speech, language and communication
difficulties among children is the time they spend on computers and watching television, according to a new poll published today to mark the launch of the Hello campaign (www.hello.org.uk)– the national year of communication.


Over half of parents surveyed blamed speech, language and communication difficulties on parents not talking to their children enough. Nearly one in three parents said they were or had been concerned about their children’s communication skills. The OnePoll survey of 6,000 people, including 3,000 parents, was commissioned by the Hello campaign to explore perceptions about children’s speech and language development.  


The Hello campaign aims to make children and young people’s communication development a priority in homes, nurseries and schools across the country. It is run by The Communication Trust, a coalition of 40 organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication, in partnership with Communication Champion, Jean Gross. The campaign is backed by government and sponsored by BT and Pearson Assessment.


Speech, language and communication needs affect over 1 million children in the UK today: four out of five respondents underestimated the extent of these difficulties. Only one in five of the 6,000 people polled considered biological or genetic reasons to be a possible cause of speech, language and communication
needs. However, the Hello campaign says the exact cause of long term speech, language and communication needs is often unknown but can be attributed to biological as opposed to environmental factors.  


Jean Gross, England’s Communication Champion, said: “Public understanding of children’s communication difficulties remains worryingly low. The automatic response seems to be to blame parents or technology. This just isn’t right. We need to clear up the confusion and myths that exist around this subject. 10% of children – that’s two to three in every UK classroom – have some form of long term communication difficulty that can affect them early, severely and for life. Their brains don’t process language in quite the same way that other children’s brains do.  These results reinforce the need for the Hello campaign to radically improve understanding of speech, language and communication difficulties and the impact this has on children’s lives.”


The adults surveyed (48% of whom were parents of children under 5), exposed widespread lack of knowledge about children’s speech and language development. The poll found, for example, that parents and the general population know more about walking milestones than talking milestones.


8% of parents said they had been or were concerned that their children’s communication difficulties were significant, with a greater proportion of these in Northern Ireland (13%) and England (8.1%) than in Scotland (6.1%) and Wales (6%). One in seven of the general population say they wouldn’t have a clue when asked whether they would recognise a child with a speech, language and communication need. Most adults however could relate to the impact of communication difficulties. When asked how they themselves felt when they struggled to get a message across or got words muddled up, two thirds of adults felt frustrated or silly with only 9% saying it didn’t affect them.


Chris Pike, young person aged 17 with a communication difficulty, says; “The worst part of having a communication difficulty is being misunderstood; quite often the people around me don’t even realise I have these special needs. Parents and teachers clearly want to help me and others like me to develop and reach our full potential. However, the vast majority of people just don’t know the reality of struggling with a communication problem.


“It’s upsetting that many people might blame my problems on spending too much time in front of TV and computer screens. Communication difficulties come in a whole variety of different forms; sometimes they aren’t visible. I know the Hello campaign will change the way parents, teachers and young people view and understand communication problems. I really hope this will allow children and young people like myself to be recognised and understood, in the same way those with dyslexia and autism are.”


The Hello campaign will improve understanding and disseminate information on typical communication development, how to spot if children are struggling and where to go for help and support. 70% of survey respondents felt that more information on how children develop speech, language and communication
would be helpful, amongst parents this rose to 82%. Only 22% would ask parents, grandparents or friendsfor information on general communication development compared to 39% going to the internet.  The Hello campaign will also prompt tangible improvements for the 1.2 million children and young people in the UK, with some form of long‐term speech, language and communication needs. This means more support for parents and carers, earlier identification of difficulties and earlier, more appropriate, referral to specialist support such as speech & language therapy.

Related articles

• Parents 'not guilty' over speech (bbc.co.uk)
• Communication breakdown: Too much TV and not enough talk 'leads to speech problems in children' (dailymail.co.uk)

Baby Talk.... let's celebrate it!

I had a lovely day yesterday, which included a mix of groups and individual clients. I enjoyed all of it but the hi-light of the day was a group of new mums and their babies. They were still at the stage where age is measured in weeks and the mums were still adapting to the enormous change to their lives while regularly swapping their various birthing stories.


The purpose of the session was to discuss 'Baby Talk' which is a series of sessions to go through important topics surrounding interaction and a baby's communication development. The first session looks at how old the baby should be before you start talking to him or her. All the mums there were adamant that it should be immediately. We discussed how new research has proved  what we suspected, that they must be able to hear before they are born. A new born can identify the voice of his mother, over others, immediately after birth according to new research from the US.


The reaction of these mothers was very refreshing! We don't run too many classes like this one unless they are commissioned by midwives or other health professionals as many feel that there's no point in talking to a baby 'as they wont talk for ages'. However, babies need to be talked to to trigger the area of the brain responsible for communication and also the centre for interaction, empathy and social skills. If they do not receive this in the first year then there are long term implications.


It is very worrying that many children today are not experiencing adequate interaction. I observed 6 young mothers last week with toddlers in pushchairs. I was waiting for a fiend who was running late so was parked at the side of a road in a housing estate.  I saw no interaction between mother and child whatsoever. 2 were texting, 1 was on the phone and the others had i-pod ear-pieces in! Where was the opportunity for communication there?


It not just a specific class problem as the Daily Telegraph reported last week that children of middle class families are suffering too from lack of attention by parents who are working longer hours.


The 2011 Hello Campaign aims to share with the general public how amazing human communication is and bring attention to what we should be doing. This month' s theme is don't take communication for granted and next month it will be all about the fact that 'babbling babies don't turn into talkative toddlers by chance, it requires help and encouragement'.


The Baby Talk sessions will celebrate this and we will discuss other issues such as the use of dummies, forwards facing push-chairs, nursery rhymes and TV watching. As I've said 100 times before, human communication is fantastic, fascinating, fabulous.... there are insufficient superlatives to describe it and yet we do take it for granted!!!

Come and join Small Talk!

Small Talk are looking for qualified paediatric Speech & Language Therapists across the UK to join our dynamic, independent team.

If you are looking to work for yourself but not sure how to start, worry that you don’t have the business knowledge to be successful and need the support/mentoring of a team, this is ideal for you.

We offer a chosen distinct geographical area, within the hours that suit you. 

Work as little as a few hours to a full time week. Combine with NHS or other employed work.

The new posts will look to commence as soon as possible for each candidate.

For more about us www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk 0844 704 5888

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Sad but true!

I cant help but feel sad that the level of apathy in some sections of society is so bad that its debilitating. The Sure Start children's centres aim to provide quality pre-school activities to both entertain and support parents and children. They do prioritise families with needs such as sole parents, children with disabilities, travelling families, fathers or those known to social services  but everyone is welcomed.


The sessions they provide are mostly free in Staffordshire. They are sourced from the leading pre-school activity providers in the area and strive for excellent service. There's choices of messy play, yoga, Debutots drama, music with mummy, cookery club and of course our own Smart Talkers Pre-School Communication groups to name but a few. It sounds great doesn't it and in most of the centres it works really well. However, because of the level of apathy in some of the areas or in the sections of society they most want to attract, the numbers attending are limited. In one Centre I couldn't get anyone at all and after 3 weeks of twiddling my thumbs, we had to give up. I'd tried everything possible including posters in local shops and  newsagents, a newspaper article, adverts, netmums etc and contacted all the health professionals, local nurseries, pre-schools and other groups.


At these centres, I see mothers with pyjamas under their coats dropping youngsters off at the adjacent school claiming they're going back to bed, others chatting aimlessly smoking with their mates at the school gate. They usually have a pre-schooler or two in tow (complete with the essential badge..... sorry dummy). They would be welcome at the groups but they'd prefer to do nothing except press the button on the remote control for little Keesha or KayD.

Unfortunately, many of these little ones suffer from a lack of appropriate stimulation and as a result are likely to have an increased risk of delayed speech, language and communication. This will then mean that they will have problems with written language as spoken language skills are the building blocks for written language.    


Unfortunately, research shows that the gap at aged 7 years is likely to persist into adulthood. This has in turn been linked to lower expected socio-economic status in later adult by such eminent scholars as Professor James Law from City University. Another US study showed that language deprivation and teen pregnancy can be linked.It is estimated here in the UK that 75% of young offenders have speech, language and communication difficulties of some type or other.


These problems could be transient difficulties i.e. they'd develop appropriate skills with stimulation or intervention, but will be real and intrusive.  These cases are not to be confused with speech, language and communication disorders which are unavoidable and will need speech and language therapy input, these are children who are language deprived.


We're not entirely sure what is happening to the children's centres after April 1st 2011 but one thing is for certain.... we cant stop trying to engage with these families by breaking through the apathy. There's too much at stake to stop!

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Related articles

• Language intervention provides educational benefits for preschool children (scienceblog.com)
• Language intervention provides educational benefits for preschool children (eurekalert.org)

Nearly one in six children - and almost one quarter of boys - have difficulty learning to talk, research suggests.

A YouGov online survey of 1,015 parents found only half of children with speech problems received expert help. The survey, for England's first "Communication Champion" Jean Gross, found some three-year-olds were unable to say a single word. Ms Gross said the proportion of children with problems is "high" and that getting help early was essential. "Our ability to communicate is fundamental and underpins everything else. Learning to talk is one of the most important skills a child can master in the 21st Century," she said. Click to play Click to play "The proportion of children who have difficulty learning to talk and understand speech is high, particularly among boys. "It is essential that all children get the help they need from skilled professionals as early as possible." Six out of 10 people questioned for the survey said the ability to talk, listen and understand was the most important skill for children to develop in the early years. This priority came ahead of the ability to interact with others (26%), reading skills (11%), numeracy skills (2%) and writing skills (1%). FIRST WORDS Dada - 15% Daddy - 13% Mama - 10% Dad - 10% Mummy 8% Mum - 7% Cat 2% No - 1% Dog - 1% All those questioned said they looked at picture books with their children, told them stories and sang nursery rhymes with them - all activities which boost language development. The survey showed that the majority of children (51%) did not enjoy looking at picture books with their parents until they were over six months old, but 18% enjoyed this at three months or younger. Children from more affluent families were reported to enjoy looking at picture books, and listening to stories and rhymes, at a younger age than children from less affluent families, researchers said. First words The most common age for children to say their first word, according to the parents surveyed, was between 10 and 11 months. More girls than boys (34% against 27%) said their first word before they reached nine months. But 4% of children had not said their first word by the age of three. There were no real social class differences in when children said their first word, the researchers said. Most parents (95%) could remember what their child's first word was. Among those surveyed, that word was most likely to be "Dadda" (15%) or "Daddy" (13%), with "Mama" (10%) and "Mummy" (8%) trailing a little behind. Speech experts generally think the "da" sound is easier for babies to say than "m". The YouGov research involved 1,015 parents of children aged one to to seven, questioned online in December. The figures have been weighted to provide a representative sample. Tweet

S & L World: a global bulletin for SLT/SLPs published by Small Talk SLT Ltd

I've been truly fascinated by following Speech & Language Therapists (they're called Speech & Language Pathologists in many parts of the world) on Twitter and Facebook. As I blogged before, I've actually had conversations with some of the people I've read about. I've been inspired and had my ways of thinking both challenged and confirmed.


I was discussing with my partner Ray, who suggested that it would be a great idea to have a magazine full of articles from around the world all about speech and language therapy/pathology. He had the means and skill to do the website and the technical know- how to make it happen........that was last week and anyone who knows me (or him), knows we NEVER hang about on a  good idea so 'S & L World' first edition will be out to co-incide with the UK Year of Speech, language and communication.

I've already got people I admire writing articles for it. 


Once the first edition is out we can do a marketing campaign, using the magazine to really get people interested. I'll invite all the UK PCTs, ASTIP members and the British Universities to take part plus our counterparts in Canada, Australia, New zealand, UAE, Cambodia.... everywhere that you'd have our profession. There are 11,500 in the UK alone. It's a great CPD opportunity (especially for me as I'll be able to read all the submissions!).


It will be a chance to share examples of good practise, discuss what works, look at specific issues and general trends.


Anyone who wants to contribute after the first issue, will have to be a subscriber, with discounts for students and retired therapists. I'm really excited!!


Please e-mail info@smalltalk-ltd.co.uk if you have anything you would like to have considered for inclusion. The deadline for the first edition is the end of November.

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