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Shona Crichton from writes about 'Parents as partners for better speech, language and communication outcomes'.1

We know that children make progress in any area of their development when they can be supported to thrive in the place and with the people where they spend the most time and who know them best. Parents are experts on their children and provide information that is integral to ensuring that a child or young person makes the best progress that they can. However there may be challenges when striving to achieve good practice for including parents in supporting children’s speech, language and communication development.

The new SEND Code of Practice highlights the importance of engaging and involving parents and families. Those working with children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), or any SEND, have a responsibility to ensure that parents are engaged with and involved in decisions that affect their child.

It’s likely that every practitioner reading this blog has examples of times where we achieve true collaborative working with parents, and times when it doesn’t work so well. What is it that we need to be aware of when working with parents to support their child’s speech, language and communication at home?

Ensuring parents are real partners - Parents want to be included as real partners, with true collaboration taking place. The challenge is not only that every child is different, but every SLCN is different, and every family is different. Taking time to share with parents their experiences of home life and their child’s SLCN, and your understanding and perception of the child’s strengths and needs will help towards partnership working that is meaningful to both parent and practitioner.

It doesn’t have to be extra – Discussing what home life is like with parents provides an opportunity to think about how language and communication can be woven in to elements of daily life that are happening already. For some parents, the thought of squeezing extra in to busy lives is just not manageable. However, the beauty of speech, language and communication is that it’s part of everything that we do. Discussing what life is like for families and working together to think about where and how speech and language targets might sit in their daily routine can be a great first step to integrating targets in to daily life. Prepositions in the bath or practising turn taking during tea-time means that speech, language and communication targets can become part of daily life.

Consider parents’ views and wishes - The Better Communication Research Programme sought views of parents with children with speech, language and communication needs. Findings from this paper show that parents are generally concerned with long term outcomes for their children – parents want their children to be included socially and to achieve independence. As practitioners working with children and young people with SLCN, our skill is in understanding parents’ long term wishes for their children. We can then break these down in to manageable, attainable short term targets that link with the long term aims that everyone can work towards achieving.

Keep parents informed – The same research also highlighted that parents like to be kept informed of how children are getting on in achieving their objectives, and that this was different across the parents who were interviewed – some wanted a weekly update on progress, others were happy to meet to discuss targets on a 6 monthly basis. Discuss with parents how and when they’d like to discuss their child’s progress with you.

The Communication Trust is a coalition of over 50 not-for-profit organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication and SLCN. Although our main audience is the children and young people’s workforce, we also have some information that’s useful for parents as do many of our members. Take a look at our website for more ideas and resources to help you encourage parents to support their children’s speech, language and communication development at home.

[1] Throughout this article, the term ‘parent’ refers to any person who is the child or young person’s main carer.

Shelley Hughes, SROT, Senior Product Manager, ÃÛÌÒapp Clinical Assessment talks on 'When Appearing to do Nothing is the Strongest Intervention' via our US blog.

Something I am regularly asked is how to intervene with particular profiles derived from administering a clinical assessment. To clarify: I am an occupational therapist working in the publishing sector, developing assessment materials for clinicians and educators to support children and adults in their everyday life; my occupational therapy background serves me well in this endeavour. So…back to the question…it is a relevant question of course; you have administered an assessment, which in itself yields useful information, and so… WHAT do you do next?

Ahh…now here’s the trick! To consider your options you need to contemplate why you are administering the assessment, and what it means to the individual involved. Some assessments take a top-down approach, i.e. they focus on the person as a whole within the context of their everyday occupations and roles important to them. The risk being that this approach does not always take into consideration how task components may be impacting roles and everyday occupations. Conversely, impairment or diagnostic level assessments can be helpful in determining how task components may affect performance and/or participation, but risk overlooking what is important to the individual in terms of roles and everyday occupations.

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Last Friday, a team of 25 judges came together to decide the results of this year’s .

This year ÃÛÌÒapp Clinical Assessment and The Communication Trust, were once again incredibly lucky to have an exceptional from across the education and speech and language sector.

We welcomed back past experts who now know our judging process extremely well, new members whose understanding of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and local practices helped to inform and guide our decisions, and past Shine a Light award winners whose stories have clearly gone on to inspire others.

Secreted away in the basement with a supply of coffee and croissants, our three panels turned their attention to the unenviable task of deciding this year’s winners and highly commended finalists. Tears and tantrums at the ready….!

There were certainly a few tears as we made our way through the shortlisted applications; and the applications that we read left many of us feeling humbled and inspired. We heard about the exceptional best practice taking place across England – strategic activities that have had demonstrable impact on students’ lives; watched our young people nominees who have speech and language difficulties and have worked tirelessly to overcome them, inspire other young people and give back to those who have supported them; as well as exceptional innovative and community-based projects that have improved children’s opportunities to learn, and helped them to participate fully in society.

For now, that is as much as I am going to tell you about this year’s winners. We’re keeping the results a secret and in true Oscars style announcing them on the 24^th September. So make a date for your diary, and follow , as we’ll soon be shining a light on the outstanding work of these settings and individuals.