Services > Families with Children under 4 > Early Years Speech, Language and Communication Service
Early Years Speech, Language and Communication Service
Our friendly team are here to support parent, giving them the skills and confidence to make a positive impact on a child’s speech, language and communication. Families will be offered a series of visits to provide support from a trained early years professional to give their child’s speech language and communication skills a boost when it matters the most.
What is it?
Families will be offered a series of visits to provide support from a trained early years professional to give their child’s speech language and communication skills a boost when it matters the most.
Who is it for?
Children aged between 1 and 3 years needing additional support with speech, language and communication skills.
What are the benefits?
• Learn at home in familiar surroundings.
• Support with recognising how the child is already communicating and how to build on this.
• Develop parent’s abilities to support their child through everyday play and routines.
Is a referral required?
Anyone who works with families who meet the criteria can refer in.
Further Information?
The Service is being delivered in children’s homes by the SLC Home Visiting Team and there is a clearly defined dynamic risk assessment in place aligned to the latest Government guidance.
The work focuses on supporting parents to:
• Understand the early communication stages and styles, and how the various interactive roles parents play affect their child’s opportunities to interact and learn.
• Look at their positive interactions and language-building strategies that accelerate early communication development which supports their confidence and skills.
• Work through a play-based coaching framework which identifies to parents the key role they play in facilitating their child’s early communication development.
• Provide a plan for applying the play-based coaching framework and interaction strategies bespoke to each child’s needs.
Families taking up the service are offered 8 weekly visits which are delivered in a blended approach of a visit to the home and a follow up phone call. The visit and call together will:
• Promote interaction between parent/care giver and child
• Promote early SLC skills through modeling reading stories, singing songs and rhymes
• Support parents to adjust their home environment to promote language and interaction in the home (e.g. turning off the TV and limiting the use of a dummy)
• Support parent/care giver to see how everyday ‘serve and return’ activities and interactions can be used to promote SLC in their young child
• Provide parent/care giver with ideas on how to support their child’s SLC
• Support parent/child relationships
During the sessions the Home Visitor will:
• Build rapport with the family
• Discuss and explain child development in an accessible way
• Acknowledge the positive strengths of the parent-child interaction
• Model, explain and discuss parenting practices
• Engage in parent-child activities, including book reading, related to the child’s developmental stage
• Encourage observation of the child’s development
• Build parental confidence
• Summarise new information and follow progress from previous visits to reinforce parent knowledge of parental strengths, newly achieved child development milestones, and activities to support further developmental progress.