Local leadership is essential in ensuring a planned and co-ordinated approach to joint commissioning of services for children with speech, language and communication needs.
Teams, early years settings and schools are encouraged to develop their own language leads/communication champions which link to the broader local strategy.
A confident, skilled workforce
There is an ongoing workforce strategy that can effectively promote all children’s speech, language and communication development and identify and provide effective language learning opportunities for children with speech, language and communication needs, including those who need extra support.
Practitioners from all agencies are able and have the confidence to engage parents/carers in difficult conversations and support them in developing the skills they need to enhance communication and language development, and are able to recognise when a child may have speech, language and communication needs.
Everyone coming into contact with, and supporting 0-5-year olds, actively promotes communication and language development.
Commissioners and providers have an agreed and shared set of key messages for families about how to promote communication and language development, for example sharing the Tiny Happy People content.
Develop local partnerships. Partnerships will be shaped by the local context and current provision, but may include health, early years, education, early help and social work services, voluntary and community sector services.
A focus on outcomes and continuous improvement
Identify and prioritise the needs of your local population.
There is a process for identifying children with delayed speech, language or communication, and possible persistent speech, language and communication needs early on.
There is mapped provision from different agencies to provide a tiered response to meet the needs of every child, broken down by age group, to identify duplication of resource and gaps in provision.
All those working with under-fives and their families have the knowledge to promote speech, language and communication development, the capacity to identify speech, language and communication needs and where appropriate, refer on to speech and language therapy services.
A system to identify and reach children who do not access/are not brought to targeted or specialist speech and language therapy services after referral.
In order to minimise the number of unattended sessions, speech and language therapy services should be provided in ways which reduce barriers to access. These include taking account of cultural, socioeconomic and logistical factors, and providing services in a range of settings including at home and others that are familiar to children and families.
Places where children spend time should be communication friendly environments (including home, educational and community settings that children access with their parents).