Diamond Lights - Guest slot, Andrew Ball, Campaign Director

This week marks my 10th anniversary of joining the voluntary sector. In that time I’ve been fortunate to have met some very remarkable people (and some pretty unremarkable ones too) but probably none more so than the parents and professionals working to support children who need help to communicate. As anyone that has ever volunteered, worked for or supported a charity will tell you, personal experience is one of the most important reasons why they give their time and support to their chosen cause.

Since I joined The Communication Trust it’s become very clear that for a long time so much of the great work that goes on in the children’s communication sector is a result of the passion and dedication of a small number of individuals – most of whom have firsthand experience of the struggle that they, their children or children close to them have faced because of some form of speech, language and communication need. What’s more, this relatively small band of people have faced the uphill task of creating a better understanding of this issue without the media spotlight or glare of publicity that many other causes have benefited from at various times over recent decades – despite this being an issue that impacts on more lives in the UK than most of the big cause célèbres we could all name.

Help, however, is now at hand with the fast approaching national year of ENTER WORKING TITLE OF CHOICE HERE! This awareness campaign will shine a big, bright light on our sector and build on recent successes in emerging this cause. The national year will increase broad understanding of how children’s communication skills should be developing , what the effects are of speech, language and communication needs and what local services parents and children need in order to make a real difference to such needs. If you have anything in particular that you would like to see happen during the national year then please do get in touch – you can tells us your views at enquiries@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk .

You always remember the good ones - Guest slot, Nicola Matthews, Project Executive

I work at The Communication Trust and do a little bit of everything and anything! I have a number of friends who are primary school teachers and thought, since I work for a charity whose one of their main audiences is teachers, I would go and watch one of them in action and get a taste of their day to day life.

So the other week I went to visit my friend Nikk (or Miss Dimes to the children) in her classroom and got to spend the morning watching her teach a bunch of very active and enthusiastic 5 and 6 year olds.

And it as brilliant, I watched the children being tested on the vocab they had been learning, helped out with one of the groups doing an maths addition activity and spoke to some of the other teachers in the school. But most importantly I got to see firsthand the impact a teacher can have on a child’s life. These children hung on every word Nikk said, they were incredibly engaged with the activities she was giving them and were so well behaved.

I’m sure when these children are older, in 20, 30 years time they will look back at their school years and will remember Miss Dimes. I still remember the name of my Year 2 teacher; Mrs Moulsham who read us Charlotte’s Web and had the most amazing cage for the class hamsters! In fact, I remember all the names of the teachers who taught lessons which I actually enjoyed going to and learnt something from. Which goes to show you always remember the good teachers.

Slow Communication

Ok. I admit it. I am an appalling blogger. It has been two months since my last blog. This is bad.

In part my position is defensible – I’ve been too busy to blog! The Communication Trust has won the contract to run a mass awareness and information campaign around speech, language and communication in 2011 and we are extending our secondary and youth justice work. Future blogs will share the detail but to get involved subscribe to our newsletter by e-mailing enquiries@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk.

However the title of this blog does not refer to the speed of my blogging. I have also been on holiday for nearly three weeks. Bliss. First real break for too long. And it was a real break. I turned off my mobile phone, unplugged the internet (took me a while to figure out how to do that) and relied on good old fashioned methods of communication. Talking, reading, drawing, listening (to my children a lot – did you know Miley Cyrus was just not cool any more – I do now) and sometimes just enjoying being quiet and watching (a good tactic when faced with moody eleven year old whose body language speaks volumes but who is refusing to talk).

It was this absence of continual information, of the bombardment that technology can bring that created the best possible rest. Don’t get me wrong I live glued to my mobile phone – texting and calls are an essential part of my job and social life, Skype is the best way to get gossip and don’t even get me on to online shopping. But it was nice to stop. However, it was also harder than I thought to switch back to ‘slow’ communication.

Reading a book to get a recipe rather than taking the first one that comes up on Google (which is probably why my cooking is so dodgy); removing games and DVDs from the kids in the car so we had to sing (badly) or talk (or shout) – these things while leading to good results, were a challenge to do. Maybe I am just rubbish at using technology appropriately and am alone in my over reliance on it at the cost of wider communication skills - but I don’t think so. I love face to face discussions; long chats on the phone; reading – and I am skilled at these things. But it was still hard for me to break the technology habits.

Now if I find it hard to revert to these ‘old fashioned’ methods of communication and this technology is new to me (relatively – I did not use a computer until I was 25) how much harder will the next generation find it – immersed as they are in it from birth. My primary school aged kids are adept at Skype, MSN, texting, gaming etc. and DVDs (downloads actually) are indeed a great babysitter.

Leaving aside the Daily Mail cries of bad parenting is it not time for a debate on how we should be preparing and supporting young people for this world of mass communication – without the hysteria and blame. The next generations will have a range of methods of communicating that we have not even considered yet. They will be able to communicate faster, with more people and receive more information than we were able to at their age. How wonderful for them – how exciting. Maybe ‘slow communication’ will become extinct? Maybe we will start to value even more those that can still communicate face to face? Maybe skills will diminish so all spoken language becomes an anachronism?

But for now, before we leap into the brave new world of Cybermen (downloaded too many Doctor Who episodes clearly), let us just start with embracing and accepting this new technology is here and working with young people to help them develop the broadest range of ways to communicate.

And for me – a healthy reminder that pulling the plug is a welcome break. Now back to the emails!

A tardis in reverse - guest slot from Norbert Lieckfeldt, Chief Executive of the British Stammering Association

The British Stammering Association is the UK’s national association on all aspects of stammering. Founded over thirty years ago, we are the place where adults who stammer, parent of stammering children and anyone else interested in the subject join forces to provide information, campaign for changes in services and raise awareness of the problems affecting people who stammer of all ages. Stammering affects about 5-7% of pre-school children, and about 1% of the school-age and adult population – that is about 720,000 people in the UK.

Our Information and Support Service is operating a telephone helpline, 0845 603 2001, and our website http://www.stammering.org/ is the most comprehensive web-based source of information on all aspects of stammering. The helpline sends out 2,500 information packs each year, and the website is accessed by 14,000 individual users every month. We have recently started Facebook and twitter campaigns as well.

We have developed detailed strategies for supporting children who stammer in the school setting – something which will be shortly freely available on a dedicated website at http://www.stammeringineducation.net/.

Our pre-school projects and campaigns are based on the recognition that early intervention can prevent a lifetime of stammering – and that far too many children still slip through the net when a brief, therapeutic intervention at the age of 3 or 4 might have resolved the problem of stammering completely. We have recently developed criteria for a model of service delivery for pre-school dysfluency and have tested this successfully in six pilot trusts – more children were referred, they were referred at a younger age, but successful intervention was quicker so they were discharged more quickly and thus there was no detrimental impact on the services for other children with SLCN; we are hoping to be able to roll this out across the country, possibly with some input from the Better Communication Research Programme.

So why “a tardis in reverse”, though? We are a relatively small charity, led by people who stammer, with a modest income and a small staff team. This was the phrase one of our members once used to describe us – we are “much bigger on the outside than on the inside”.

Saving time, money and avoiding disaster - guest slot

This week's blog is by Cara Evans, Deputy Director at The Communication Trust:

I started at the Trust almost at inception and with my most esteemed colleagues I have developed the governance, working principles and structure at the Trust. Through this blog I want to explain the values and impact of good project management. Now I know if I had included that as my title I would have turned you off at the first hurdle. I ask you to bear with me so that you too can save time and avoid disaster in all that you do!

Someone recently almost referred to me as JUST a project manager and quickly corrected herself. I will be bold in my next statement but very confident it is correct. The Trust would not have been as successful in such a short space of time without good project management principles at its very core. Simply we make sure that everything the Trust does is delivered on time, on budget and to an agreed quality. It is all very good having creative ideas but they need to be delivered. It is essentially very simple, but requires a certain skill set and knowledge to do this with charm and finesse. Good project managers are in short supply and seriously undervalued in the third sector in my experience (having worked for 15 years for 10 charities).

Let me ask a question would you ask a project manager to assess a child with speech, language and communication needs and suggest ways to support that child and their family. I think not, so why are we asking these experts to manage a project.

So what is project management and why is it so important. Essentially you follow a simple path ; you decide what you want to do, why, you agree how it can be delivered, who is involved and why, when does it needs to be done and how much will it cost. You plan and monitor, you get on with it, job done! Ok there are a few more things you need to consider and this is a very short list but you get the idea.

I say to all you project managers out there don’t let anyone call you JUST a project manager, stand proud of your skills and expertise and show them how it’s done!

Start of a social movement?...

I like this. Not because it is a particularly good joke (I am more of a Clare in the Community girl myself) but because it shows the issue has arrived. Well, at least that the issue has left the station.

The Communication Trust has, as a core strategic objective, the development of social movement to claim communication as a right. Social movement is a grand term, much written upon (Google Tily to get a sense of the theory). But in essence a social movement is a major vehicle for ordinary people's participation in public politics. For recent examples ‘think green’ or ‘drop the debt’. Ordinary people mobilised, often by the third sector, to take action and become ‘we’ rather than ‘they’. When communication skills becomes the ‘third pint in the pub’ issue; when Jeremy Kyle invites parents of children with SLCN onto his show; when 10 000 turn up outside Westminster with ‘communicate by right’ banners then we will know we are getting there. Bad comic strips jokes are a good start.

Seeing communication as the 21st century life skill, and knowing as we do how many children do not have the skills or support that they need, how could we want anything less than a movement to make change. Social movement brings policy change and funding and changes attitudes. And we need all three – now. The National Year should help give us a push but the work of the Trust, Trust members and now the Champion have certainly created the media interest that will help form the basis of such of the movement that we aspire to.

Not all of this media coverage has been helpful. Little upset to find out that my desire for materials things (handbags in my case) and working motherhood is apparently the reason for my daughter’s challenges with phonics (thank you Guardian - really the Guardian??!!). And SLTs as elocutionists for the middle classes? (Evening Standard – slightly less surprise there). But some has been wonderful. The recent Times and Independent pieces really outline well the challenges some children face. And the emerging debate is one to be captured and developed (read for example the Observer piece in defence of computer games).

So. A good start. Let’s keep up the momentum. And if my view of emerging the issue is an Eastenders character with specific language impairment falling in love with their speech and language therapist (yes I know it is unprofessional but it is Eastenders right) then what is yours?

New Year's Resolution

I love New Year. A chance to make lots of new promises to be a better and improved person. I have been told that, apparently, resolving to buy myself one new handbag a month is not an appropriate resolution so have settled instead for another gym membership (this time one that I intend to use because I have also been told that buying a gym membership in January and only going once in September is, apparently, a very expensive way to do one step class).

More importantly two resolutions that might actually matter.
1) To blog weekly and not require my team to beat me over head to write something
2) To champion the third sector as a significant force for change in children’s lives

In my defence 1 has sometimes not happened because I have been busy doing 2.

Some of you have commented on the recent Third Sector debate that I took part in which looked at whether, given the recession, the sector should be more professional (implicit in this that we should be more like corporate institutions like, say, banks).

This reminded me of a recent ceremony I attended at a top rated London business school where the Dean expressed his pleasure that the students who were studying for their Masters in Voluntary Sector management had so many opportunities to learn about ‘real life’ (seriously that is what he said) from fellow post graduates undertaking study in banking, finance and corporate administration who, after all, have the expertise and business skills that charities so desperately need (seriously he said that too!).

It is also true that some charities could do with say, more support with commercial skills or with finance and legal matters. But, hey, is that not true of some corporate and public sector bodies too (or did I misunderstand the stories that dominated the press in 2009?).

The third sector is professional. We are complicit sometimes in defining professional in terms that private, and sometimes public sector, bodies value e.g. slick branding; reducing costs; increasing profit; efficiencies, market domination, staff with letters after their name etc. Not that these things do not matter to charities (indeed as anyone who has run a successful charity on a shoe string and no cash flow knows points 2 and 3 are core skills for any successful charity CEO). But when we define professionalism it should be in terms of our outcomes for our beneficiaries. It should be about our effectiveness and our values.

The Communication Trust's membership is full of organisations bursting with clever, able professionals delivering excellent services to some of the most vulnerable children and young people in society. Trust members employ some of the most qualified and experienced speech and language therapists and specialist teachers in the country (putting to rest another common misconception that the third sector has limited expertise – a regular challenge from public sector unions in recent months).

Trust members drove the campaigning that led to the Bercow Review and the Better Communication Action Plan. The third sector can lobby for improved public sector services and for more resources to flow to local provision in a way that front line public sector staff will always be challenged to (as one PCT employed SLT told me recently – “we know that the provision is not good enough post-11 but if we say so we criticise our employer but if you say it they might not cut posts”).

Trust members run outstanding (OFSTED says so) non maintained special schools. Thousands of parents get their first, and sometimes only, advice, information and support from voluntary organisations.

And, for so many children with the most severe and complex speech, language and communication needs it is often Trust members who provide the vital lifeline when working through the maze of public sector provision. This often draws on the experiences and expertise of, often voluntary and ‘unqualified’, parents who have been there themselves (which makes a lie of the common myth that professional only means paid staff and that expert can only mean a degree).

Are the third sector better than corporate providers? Yes sometimes. Are we better than public sector provision? Yes sometimes. Could we learn from both the corporate and public sector? Yes and we should strive to do so.

Celebrating the strengths, expertise and professionalism of the third sector should not be seen as putting down corporate and public sector colleagues. No sector, private, public or third, has the monopoly on good work or effective outcomes and it will take collaboration to get the best possible results for children and their families.

I believe that the third sector has something special to give so for 2010 I resolve to be the sector’s biggest cheerleader.

Something slightly easier to do than a weekly trip to the gym.