Opinion: In my view - Guidance for talking
The need for good speaking, listening and communication skills in the early years has, rightly, shot up the agenda in recent years, with the Bercow Report and the Every Child a Talker programme.
Good communication is vital to the development of children's social and emotional well-being as well as to their learning. This forms the basis of the work of the National Literacy Trust's Talk To Your Baby campaign.
The Sure Start programme encouraged the development of many fine early communication initiatives. Most were locally based and often short-term funded, so, with funding from the JJ Charitable Trust, Talk To Your Baby set out to see how these and others could be turned into long-term, sustainable strategies across local areas. Dr Cathy Hamer undertook a pilot project in the West Midlands to explore what was working, what factors needed to be resolved and what we could do to help.
As a result, we have created a guidance paper to provide all local areas with a structure for developing a sustained approach, highlighting the links to both local targets and national initiatives and just who in the area needs to be included. It features six case studies of successful approaches to communication development.
As Janet Cooper, project lead for Stoke Speaks Out, says, 'Children's speech and language in Stoke-on-Trent is improving dramatically. This is a result of all agencies pulling together and improving practice. Stoke Speaks Out has become more than a "project". It is now a programme that the whole city has signed up to.'
We owe it to future babies and their parents to make sure that knowledge and support are in place and everyone signed up to ensuring that every parent really does talk to their baby.
- The guidance paper is available at www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk
