To question or not to question, that IS the question! - Alison Marrs, Professional Advisor

I recently saw my friend’s 18 month old son Marley and he called my water bottle, ‘more’. This confirmed to me how children link what they hear to what they see. Naturally my friend would ask Marley, ‘more?’ when offering him water and he now thinks water is called, ‘more’.

Adults do need to think about how we use questions therefore.
If a child’s not developed an understanding of what an object or concept is, then, just as Marley did, they’ll link a question they hear, to what they see. If every time they hold a banana, and an adult says, ‘What’s that?, they may think a banana’s called a ‘What’s that?’

The use of questions and their impact during interactions between parents and children (often referred to as ‘parent-child communication’ or ‘parent-child interaction’) has been studied widely. Parents naturally ask questions and give commands when there is silence or when their child is not saying anything. Parents naturally try to create a conversation this way.

Unknown to many though, research has shown that frequent parental use of directive and corrective statements (e.g. questions and command giving) has been shown to link with delays in children's language development. Of course we all naturally ask questions of our children, but if we do it too often it can have an effect.

From such research, professional’s advice to parents is often to ‘follow their child’s lead’ and to, ‘Question less and comment more’. This involves:

· Watching what they are doing (silently)
· Waiting for them to communicate (either by them doing something such as pointing/looking at an object or by saying something)
· Responding to this communication (for example, by also pointing then naming an object, looking at what their child looks at and naming it, copying what their child says or adding one or two more words to this.)

This can be particularly useful for young children who are developing language or who have difficulty learning language i.e. children with a delay in their language development or those with a persistent speech, language and communication need (SLCN). It’s often these children who are silent, creating the natural instinct in their parents to want to take the lead with questions and commands.

However often these children don’t understand questions and commands, need extra time to process what they’ve heard and need extra time to respond. If parents and adults question children less and comment more, it can support their language to develop.

So – are adults not meant to ask questions at all?
The research mentioned above indicates that frequent direction and commands to children can have an impact as opposed to occasional direction and commands.

Some questions are asked to test children’s knowledge by wanting a one-word factual answer e.g. ‘What’s that?’, but other questions which are open-ended, can lead to getting longer answers from children.

Research into the use of open-ended questions with school children, that start with phrases such as, ‘I wonder if...?, ‘What could we do....?, Can you find a way to.....?’ has shown these questions to be useful for learning, encouraging children to think, develop creative thinking and problem solving skills.These type of questions allow children to use the knowledge they have to come up with an answer rather than worrying about getting the answer right. Children’s answers can reveal a lot about their knowledge in comparison to when they are being asked the answer to a closed, testing questions such as, ‘What is the capital of France?’

There are different types of questions and as adults we just have to be careful about when and how we use them.

The breakdown of society? - Anita Kerwin-Nye, Director

I am not so glib as to suggest that my partner leaving me trapped at home on Saturday by taking car seat and pram led directly to riots on the streets but it did leave me wondering about the importance of communication skills, and real human interaction, in building resilient communities.

What’s the link? Well I had a range of chores that I planned to do with children and baby in and around the local town. When the option of leaving the home was removed, because carrying a wiggly heavy baby 2 miles in your arms is not a good idea, I did them all online.

The food shopping was delivered courtesy of the local shop’s national website. I uploaded photos to a national store to get them printed rather than taking the memory stick to the local photo shop. I emailed thank you cards for the christening rather than writing them out and taking them to the post office. I sent my flowers to via the web rather than picking them up from the florist and popping around to the neighbour who had helped during a recent family emergency.

So my spoken contact for the day was limited to my children (lovely) and my partner (raised voices – less lovely - but forgiven now) and a delivery man. Yes I made a few phone calls but that interaction that comes from being out and about – chatting to the woman on checkout, whinging with fellow customers in the post office about the length of the queues, taking half an hour to wax lyrical about the beautiful flowers with a fellow enthusiast – were all lost.

Online everything is great. I love my smartphone. I am a child (well less child) of the internet and my children treat it as a normal part of their life. But balance is everything. Just one day without real people to eyeball and talk to made me twitchy but I can also see how easy it would be to slip into a world where everything was done with the click of the mouse. Talking matters. Face time matters (and not just as an iPhone application). Remembering not to drive off with the car seat in your car matters (and won’t I can assure you happen again!).

Farewell blog - Cara Evans, Operations Director

So the time has come to take my ever increasing bump off home and prepare myself for the next adventure. As many of you will have seen from my last day in the office and at the last consortium meeting it's quite an emotional time for me, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, one of the main reasons I took the job at The Communication Trust was my very strong belief in the power of the third sector. It has been so wonderful to see the SLCN sector come together in the past four years and speak with one voice. I would particular like to thank I CAN for hosting the Trust so far. I know as the only full time member of staff in the first year the Trust would not have been able to deliver so much without the help of I CAN. Each consortium members bring its own unique perspective, skills and expertise to the Trust and we are working so well because of that continued support. I do hope that we continue to work successfully in partnership as that is our core strength.

Secondly, I have been introduced to a whole new sector and learnt so much about speech, language and communication. As a parent I hope to transfer that knowledge into practice! I have been amazed by the passion and determination of many speech, language therapists, not least the ones I work with closely. Their desire to help children and young people is phenomenal and has been an inspiration to me.

Lastly, but by no means least I have been so lucky to work directly with some wonderful people. I can honestly say in my nearly 20 years of working I have never had such a hard working team. I know many of you see the quantity and quality of what we produce but from only 14 (not all full time) people is simply amazing. I shall miss them more than words can say and am looking forward to working with them again in a few months time. So farewell for now and I will keep you updated on my next adventure.

Charity cuts or charity growth - Anita Kerwin-Nye, Director

Shock news today – Councils cutting charity funding with more than 2,000 charities sacking staff and closing services with those working with the young and disabled worst hit. For those of us working in the sector the shock is that it is only 2,000 as horror stories of contract cuts have been circulating for the last year.

Does it matter? In the scheme of things the £110 million at risk in the report http://falseeconomy.org.uk/ is small fry compared to wider cuts in public service spending. If cutting charity money saves public sector staff maybe, if it saves an experienced SLT or an excellent advisory teacher, that is a good thing?

Except that so many of the charities being affected are, like so many third sector bodies, the ones that focus on the most vulnerable. The niche groups. Those requiring specialist help. Those who are too expensive, too difficult, too marginalised for the state sector to reach.

The picture is still unclear. Alongside these cuts the ‘market’ is, as I have written before, opening up in ways that we could never have expected and some third sector bodies are preparing for an increase in income or moving further into public sector delivery. Under ‘Any Qualified Provider’ a range of voluntary organisations are gearing up to compete for public sector contracts which into the future may include speech and language therapy provision. In Lincolnshire the Council is considering moving all schools into academies supported by one charity and last week saw the announcement that a new charity will take forward the Achievement for All programme working with schools to improve outcomes for children with SEN (including speech, language and communication needs (SLCN)).

So what's role for charities into the future? What is the real picture? Trust members - has your local income gone up or down? Are you gearing up for bigger things or are your services at risk? For public sector staff – are charities a blessing picking up the needs that you cannot or a drain taking resources away from where you need it? Can the not-for-profit ethos be protected or will we see a rise in ‘for profit’ provision to support children with SLCN? And most of all how will we ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable, and often the most disenfranchised, are best met.

The debate is being had – are you in or out? Laura Smith, Media and Campaign Manager

As a media professional, I know the importance of the phrase ‘if a debate is being had it's better to be in it than out and watching from the sidelines’. Media work is tough - you cannot ‘manage’ or ‘control’ the message but it is our job to frame the debate in the best way possible.

Yesterday, a piece on the BBC Today Programme (which has over 1 million listeners a day) set the pace for the news agenda. This has continued today with stories in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph.

Journalists have been drawn to Frank Fields MP, the Government’s poverty czar, anecdotal comments that some children start school unable to say their name or even unaware that they have a name. We are talking about a small minority of children but experts like Jean Gross, Communication Champion, and other head teachers have said ‘sadly it does happen’.

Neil Wilson, a Head teacher of a federation of schools in Manchester, was brave enough to put his voice out there and say “This is the Holy Grail of breaking barriers of underachievement and disaffection”. And by ‘this’ he means improving children’s communication skills.

It's our job (and I mean the collective we) to broaden the debate out. To ensure that messages come through that communication underpins everything else, that we are not talking about one ‘homogenous’ group of children and importantly that the solutions are out there and great work is being done on the ground. Jean did this very well in yesterday Today’s Programme – you can listen again here.

The Communication Trust represents 40 voluntary and community organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication. Many of the children and young people we represent have a long term communication need that has absolutely nothing to do with social and environmental factors. They need specialist help at the right time and deserve greater understanding from society.

However, we also advocate for those children with delayed language and this is a large group - 50% in some areas of social deprivation. They are important because this is about children’s life chances and with the right help they can catch up with their peers. Our consortium understands more than most how challenging life is if you struggle to communicate and no child should do so needlessly.

This is why the Hello campaign (national year of communication) is working to help both groups of children and to make communication a priority for all. We have developed posters, top tips leaflets, ‘ages and stages’ booklets for parents and professionals that are all available free at www.hello.org.uk/resources

Within our consortium help lines are available (such as Afasic’s and I CAN’s enquiry service) and the British Stammering Association’s facebook page is an excellent example of support and advice that can be provided to others. If you haven’t – take a moment to find out more about our consortium here.

So I ask you to add your voice to the mix. Comment on newspaper articles, write your own blog, post up your thoughts on Facebook or Twitter and talk to others because that what’s the media does – it starts a conversation and then we need to fill it.

Raising expectations but not meeting needs?

I have been asked several times over the last year if now is really the right time to be running a major awareness raising campaign. With cuts to services rife and ongoing confusion on health and education structures some have asked if it is fair to raise awareness of speech, langauge and communication needs (SLCN) when there may be a dearth of local services to refer families to.

The current risk to service provision concerns the Trust and our members greatly. Not only do we back RCSLT’s Giving Voice Campaign, the private and public lobbying from the voluntary sector locally and nationally is one of the best defences against cuts.

But the idea of not running Hello just because there are cuts to provision is not something we could entertain. Part of the reason that it is so easy to cut SEN services is because, unless you are a parent of a child with a specific language impairment, the general public just don’t get it. I know I am such a parent.

More importantly though to suggest that we should not try everything we can to identify a child’s SLCN because we would be raising expectations of services that might not be there is, to my mind, not fulfilling our obligation to children. Firstly families should rightly expect a service and should be supported to agitate for same. Secondly there are many things that parents and the universal workforce can do to support both typical communication development and to help a child with SLCN that can be put into place immediately. This does not negate the need for specialist help for those that need it but rather recognises that provision is the sum of input from many professionals.

Most importantly the early identification of needs is one of the single most important aspects in mitigating the impact of SLCN and regardless of service provision the ‘naming’ of a problem that many parents know is there but can’t quite put their finger on is liberating – even if it is the start of a long and sometimes difficult journey.

So yes – now is the right time to raise awareness, to make sure families are not alone and to ensure the public know why communication matters. And this year with Hello, and next year and the year after, and until the job is done, the Trust will be making sure that no child with SLCN feels alone.

Speech and language everywhere - Anita Kerwin-Nye, Director

What a great first day back from maternity leave. A meeting with the Minister to discuss the SEN Green Paper and the brilliant new research piece from Rousltone et al on unequivocal link between speech and language and achievement.

The Roulstone article opens with a summary of speech, language and communication / needs (SLC/N) in the policy world and as I read it I realised how very far we have come in the last five years. When starting as Director of Communications at I CAN I was struck by how little speech and language featured in policy. At best it was in an SEN ghetto and even there a poor relation. There were some wonderful advocates of speaking and listening within curriculum and early years but they were lone voices in an agenda dominated by reading and writing.

The work I started then built on efforts of many before and pushed forward an agenda of collaboration that has led the success we see now.

I wouldn’t quite say speech and language is the ubiquitous issue de jour but I’d argue that we have hit the target I set to place speaking and listening in the same ball park as childhood obesity. And, with much respect to my very dear colleagues in autism and dyslexia, we are closer to having specific language impairment and other SLC/N as recognised in policy and trade press terms as those equally important conditions – a challenge I took on at the launch of The Communication Trust at the Cinnamon Club.

Policy shift is one thing – and the increase in both quality and number of media mentions is another win – but key is what happens on the ground. Our work on raising awareness has undoubtedly contributed to investment in the frontline from Every Child a Talker (ECAT), the Bercow Review and the resulting Action Plan and our efforts mean that many new central initiatives support speech and language locally. I hear much from parents and professionals how the work of the Trust and our partners, the Communication Champion and Hello has helped them save and shape frontline services by providing a spotlight on SLC/N and supporting their local advocacy efforts.

But we are entering difficult times. We have won much ground but the task now is to keep moving forward when the easiest thing to do would be to fall back. So there are new challenges to set, old partners to pull closer and new ones to seek out. So here is to the first day back and to the first day of the next five years.

Please click here to view information about the Roulestone Research, this links to the Latest News section on the Hello website and is the article titled: Reading and talking to children at home makes starting school easier