A little brave lion - Andrew Ball, Campaign Director

I recently had to take my 3 year old son to our local Accident and Emergency department. We’re lucky that our local hospital has a separate emergency department for children with a nice waiting room with a handful of toys (mostly broken), a vending machine (full of healthy sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks) and a nice big widescreen TV (to help while away the hours waiting).

To my surprise, whoever run this children’s A&E had decided that it was appropriate to have the EastEnders omnibus edition showing on the television...

When I arrived there were two young parents with their kids already waiting to be seen – a father and son and a mother and daughter. The young father was content for his 18 month old son to play with the toys whilst he concentrated on his BlackBerry. In the 20 minutes we were waiting there, the only thing that the father said to his son was "I'm watching you" (while he clearly was playing with his phone) and “sit down, and watch that”.

Meanwhile, the young mum was watching the television with her 4 year old daughter. After a few minutes the daughter turned to her mum and said "I love Cat and the baby..."! Now I know that ‘cat’ and ‘baby’ are probably two of the first words that children learn but surely they should never be used by a 4 year in relation to a story line involving cot death, kidnapping and who knows what else. Tom and Jerry never covered those issues.

All this was very timely I thought given the launch last week of Raa Raa the Noisy Lion and our recent surveys about parents attitudes towards watching TV with their children. My son ended up being admitted to hospital overnight which meant that I got to watch the first episode of Raa Raa with him – and he loved it. We’ve watched each subsequent episode at least a further 3 times thanks to the BBC iPlayer so that’s at least one very happy viewer!

So, if you’re a parent of a young child and are wondering what to watch together or if you manage a children’s A&E department with a TV and are wondering what to show on it, may I suggest Raa Raa the Noisy Lion. It’s so much better than EastEnders - and far more realistic!

P.S. My son made a full recovery...

Check out what Essex are doing - Linda Rooney, Local Advisor

Here are just some of the activities and programmes being undertaken by Speech and Language Therapists, Early Years and Education colleagues around Essex.

- In Southend-on-Sea there has been a "Big Hello" event at the Thorpe Greenway school
- A supermarket treasure hunt is being organised for 31st May-3rd June
- A "Communication Champion Setting" Quality Mark event will be held on the 22nd June
- Look out for the "Speech on the Beach"event on 10th August
- In October there will be an event to highlight the monthly theme -"not just words" - exploring alternative and augmentative methods of communication.

The Early Years Specialist Teaching Team will be showcasing the impact from the Inclusion Development Programme (IDP), Speech, Language and Communication Needs, facilitated by their participation in the East Region cross Local Authority IDP Impact Projects 2010-2011.

Makaton " taster sessions" will be offered to childcare practitioners throughout 2011 and Makaton resources have been purchased for loan through the Early Years Library.

Multiple copies of the I CAN resources "Babbling Babies " and "Toddler Talk" have also been included in to the Early Years Resource Library for loan to all Early Years practitioners.

The area SENCO team is busy monitoring the relevant websites and is e-mailing copies of all relevant downloadable resources to all 650 pre-school settings in Essex as and when they come on line.

The pre-school team is planning conferences and workshops on the use of picture communication systems within pre-school settings.

The Early Years consultants will continue to promote the National Year throughout the summer with "Walk and Talk " materials utilising providers and festivals.

To round the year off, the Speech and Language Therapists and Early Years Team will be devising "Seasonal Gifts" with a communication theme.

All great news for children and young people in Essex - working for a better quality of life.

Hello Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire - Linda Rooney, Local Advisor

Well, it’s one month now since I took myself out of retirement and stepped forward to have a go at doing something for children that need help with their speech, language and communication.

I have been busy in Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, as a local regional advisor, asking people to take action for the National Year of Communication - Hello campaign. This is more than a national campaign - as with communication - it’s everybody’s business. It’s not a “top- down initiative - it’s about spreading the word and making change happen in local settings. So, I have been establishing networks between local practitioners, providing resources, offering advice, capturing good practice and sharing ideas.

And......there are some great things going on out there!

From a “Big Hello” event to “speech on the beach”; from the purchase and sharing of essential communication resources for practitioners to “walk and talk” activities in the park! From conferences to celebrate the National Year (including the use of alternative and augmentative systems of communication) to the establishment of steering groups to ensure that the initiative is sustained - it is all happening in the region!!

So, hopefully, by the end of my placement I will have been able to help the Hello campaign be the national and local success it absolutely needs to be!!

Baby Blog 1 - Anita Kerwin-Nye, Director

As Director of The Communication Trust I’d like to think my commitment to the cause is pretty clear. However, I feel that I have gone above and beyond in demonstrating my commitment to the issue by conspiring to have my latest child on the 1 March – day one of Talk to Your Baby month and a key date in the National Year of Communication.

Do I talk to my baby? Of course. My first word was naturally ‘Hello’ and baby Joshua gets much input daily - from a terrible rendition of Twinkle Twinkle to long treatises on the state of the British media and the pros and cons of the Royal Wedding. We have just started baby signing (thank you to all those who sent us wonderful resources) and speaking to the baby was a factor in our pram choice (that and I liked the colour orange.)

We tick all the boxes for model parents (we even turn the TV off sometimes and we are not giving him a Nintendo DS until he is at least a year) and we encourage lots of talking time with grandparents and siblings.

But talking is the relatively easy bit. Maybe the month should have been titled ‘listen to your baby’ because, as the mother of two pre-teen girls as well as a new born, I think this is where the real challenge is.

From day one Joshua has communicated with us. The little piggy grunts from his first minutes as he tried to find dinner and the little whimpers of satisfaction when the search was successful – a pattern of noises repeated at every feed. The cry that means ‘wind me now and I am about to vomit on your shoulder’ is totally different to the command to ‘change my nappy’. And, reflecting the fact that sounds are not the only way to communicate, we have responded to his facial grimaces (many and varied) and his range of wiggles and hand shakes (lots of wiggling hands means 'watch out I am about to fill my nappy' and one arm above his ahead means 'I am doing my final pre sleep stretch').

All this and he is only six weeks old. So much to hear and to understand already.
As parents it is essential to be an effective listener. Not only does it avoid many problems from an early age - very messy giving Joshua a feed when he was making nappy changing signals - modelling good listening skills is key to helping our children develop their own ability to listen. I have always thought listening (and with it understanding) is the poor relation when considering speech and language ability. It is much harder to spot effective listening - everyone knows their child’s first word but few would recall the first word that their child heard and understood.

So – we are listening to Joshua carefully and doing all we can to help develop his own skills. Lots of reading, rhymes and different sounds against limited background noise to help him refine his listening and lots of fun listening games (www.literacytrust.org.uk has some good ideas). I am watching like a hawk for evidence of his the first word that he hears and understands and we will celebrate this on a par with his first spoken word – anyone want to make a prediction as to what it might be?

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well – you can actually! - Alison Marrs, Hello Advisor

So – this is my first blog....ever! When I started this post (March 7th) I told myself I was going to blog weekly. But I didn’t. It was on my list of things to do. I didn’t do it. I joined Twitter and Tweeted. I kept saying I was going to do a blog...and guess what? I didn’t.

I avoided it because I thought I didn’t know what I was doing, because I thought it would take up too much time, because I thought it was too late to start.

Then:
• I spoke to Robin at work about her blog and got inspired (heard other’s stories)
• I got sent the link to The Communication Trust’s blogs (had a template to follow)
• I had a meeting with colleagues on how to blog (information given)
• I heard about the aims of the blogs and how my viewpoint counts (given confidence and understanding of the aim)
• I blocked out the time in my diary to sit down and do this (organised myself!)
• I changed my attitude from ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can’ (no pun/plug intended there!) and from ‘It is too late’ to ‘Just do it!’

And? Well, I realised how easy it is to have something on your ‘to-do’ list and do nothing and yet every day I am asking people to take action for Hello.

So – I know what it is like! But if you can just make the time to have a look, then I have been so impressed by The Communication Trust and the Hello resources, which will save you time in the long run once you start using them. Look at the website www.hello.org.uk. This has it all – other’s stories/Hello event ideas, planning templates to use, information on the campaign and to share, a calendar to download to help with organising time!

I have crossed ‘blogging’ off my to-do list and it wasn’t even that painful!

80% less 100% delivery - Cara Evans, Operations Director

As some of you may have read, The Communication Trust has recently learned that we have funding for another two years. Happy days! Now the real work begins... We have 80% less funding than we had hoped for our national year programme of work – whilst on the face of it is the cut is disappointing, the reality is that it could have been far worse.

We have though secured more for our core programme of work than we have done over recent years, which means that the combination of funding for the two programmes is roughly the same as that which we received for the current financial year. This presents us with two challenges. Firstly, managing everyone’s expectations regarding the national year as we will not be making the huge media splash that many people were hoping for. That said, the level of local support that we are seeing is amazing - our recent regional events saw 600 local practitioners coming to share their ideas. What was even more amazing was that some of those that attended and contributed to the events didn't even know if they had jobs from April. Money can't buy that type of commitment.

Secondly, we need to continue to offer value for money whilst ensuring that we keep to our core principle of ensuring that our consortium partners receive the higher percent of our funding. This means everyone we work with needs to ensure that they offer the most cost effective service without affecting quality. This is a challenge indeed but one which the sector knows all too well how to overcome as it something it has always had to do. I have no doubt our partners will work with us to deliver an impactful programme of work with all the funding we have available.

One final point this. This is the first time since the Trust was founded that we have our funding agreed before we start the programme of work, which makes planning and budgeting that much easier! Here’s to an exciting year.

Seeing the wood through the trees - Eve Wagg, Programme Manager

The regional briefing events have now finished. Phew. In 2 months we transformed a seed of thought into an organised roadshow of 5 regional events to brief local ‘movers and shakers’ on how they can help execute Hello across the country.

Hello isn’t a top down initiative, we want to enthuse, support, guide and help local leads to spread the word and make change happen in their local settings. This way we can reach the most amount of children, parents and young people.

Now wise people often say there is no ‘I’ in Team. This is very true. Without an exceptionally hard working, committed and slightly mad team these events wouldn’t have happened. In brief we...
- Reached 592 practitioners across the country in 21 days
- Distributed over 6,100 Hello materials and many more from our consortium and sponsors
- Heard from 9 Local Authorities about their local initiatives
- Confirmed 102 communication leads
- Met with 127 representatives from a possible 152 top tier local authorities, along with many schools, colleges, universities and other individual settings.

This is not to mention the fun we had along the way. Other highlights included...
- Rating premier inns and conference sandwiches
- Tea and winegums
- Eating far too many Percy pigs on long train journeys
- Trying not to hit people with our banners as we squeezed onto the 5:42 to Leeds
- Completing the crossword
- Packing, unpacking, repacking hundreds and hundreds of cardboard boxes.

So thank you to everyone who attended, showed their support and helped out at these events. Now we can finally see the wood through the trees and start putting plans into practice. Not to mention catch up on some sleep.

If you would like to nominate yourself as your local communication lead please contact me at ewagg@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk

Alternatively please email me if you can help... 9 across ‘Worried a new team's endlessly lousy (7) ’