Opportunity Areas: Norwich - Talking it up

As a result of Covid-19, many children will miss out on the opportunity to visit their new Reception class before the start of the autumn term. As a way to ease the transition process, Norwich Opportunity Area is funding the creation of video tours to provide virtual introductions from key members of staff so that children and their families can begin to recognise the faces of the people they will speak to the most.

‘A day after the offer went out my inbox was flooded with heads saying “how can we sign up?”,’ says Ashley Cater, project manager at Norwich Opportunity Area.

When Covid-19 hit, the city of Norwich was reaching the end of a three-year Opportunity Area programme, designed to support social mobility and tackle the attainment gap. Some of the funded projects have had to think creatively about how to continue supporting children, families and practitioners during this time, but the Opportunity Area team has also been able to use OA funding to specifically focus on issues arising from lockdown.

‘We were due to finish at the end of August, but we now have the flexibility to roll over our programme to Christmas and look at how to respond to the current circumstances,’ says Katie White, programme manager.

A virtual workshop took place in June, bringing together early years leads to discuss best practice for the transition into Reception, and the team is also developing workshops for schools and feeder settings. A campaign is planned in partnership with Norfolk County Council, giving ideas for simple activities parents can carry out over the summer to support children’s readiness for school, and sharing key messages about transition.

Focusing on communication

One of Norwich Opportunity Area’s three priorities is supporting early speech and language development. The city ranked 323rd out of 324 localities in the Government’s Social Mobility Index, which measures the chances that a child from a disadvantaged background will do well at school and get a good job.

‘Norwich is one of the nicest places to live in the world,’ says Emma Cane, speech and language therapist at West Earlham Infant and Nursery School. ‘But you can walk along a lovely road, then take a turning to the right and fall into a pit of deep deprivation. We’ve got everything stacked against us – drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence and lots of child protection issues.’

Some 84 per cent of children attending West Earlham have speech and language delays or disorders. ‘We are talking about a delay of a year or a year and a half, not a few months,’ says deputy head Jade Hunter.

Sarah Mardell, head at West Earlham, is pleased the Opportunity Area has chosen to focus on communication. ‘We have always said this is a massive issue, and now it is really recognised across the whole area,’ she says.

The school has been working hard to tackle communication issues for a number of years, with interventions including Word Aware, a whole-school approach to the teaching of vocabulary, Signalong and Talk Boost, as well as speech- and language-focused ‘parent cafés’, allowing parents with similar issues to connect with each other.

‘As a school we are as committed to being generous professionals as we are committed to raising the speech, language and communication skills of all our students,’ says Ms Cane. ‘Our collective experience meant that when asked how to ensure that all children in the Norwich Opportunity Area could access enhanced speech and language support, we were able to suggest a robust, graduated approach to speech, language and communication training that, together with excellent resources from The Communication Trust, we knew would support nurseries, schools, parents and ultimately all children in the Norwich Opportunity Area.’

The Opportunity Area team developed two main programmes to tackle these issues. The first, Communication Champions training, is delivered in partnership with The Communication Trust and focuses on upskilling practitioners in schools, settings and other organisations. Those attending training were given access to the WellComm speech and language assessment tool.

‘As part of the WellComm toolkit, practitioners are also given the “Big Book of Ideas” to help them provide follow-up interventions for children at the right level. When delivered regularly, these interventions support children to make progress with their communication development,’ says Ms Cater.

Using the same assessment tool allows outcomes to be shared at a city-wide level. ‘That shared understanding did not exist before, and means that any training we decide to invest in in the future can be targeted at the schools and settings that need it most,’ says Ms White.

Training goes online

The Communication Champion leaders now have a responsibility to share their learning with the rest of their teams, as well as other schools and settings, and the OA estimates this extra training will reach 752 practitioners across Norwich and wider Norfolk. ‘Since coronavirus, we have been working with the Communication Trust to put that training online,’ says Ms Cater.

‘We thought “it’s just another course”, but everything about the pre-school has changed since we took part in the Communication Champions training,’ says Fran O’Neill, co-manager of Peapod Pre-school. ‘Every time we put resources out now, we think about communication. We do lots of activities that extend children’s vocabulary – broadening children’s knowledge through shared memorable experiences provides exciting things to talk about, and expands understanding of descriptive vocabulary.’

Children enjoyed visits from alpacas and bats, for example, while Elsa from Frozen came to sing with the children, and parents stayed for yoga sessions. Some OA funding was used to buy resources, such as a recordable talking interactive wall, where children can press buttons to hear words and phrases. The pre-school has also used the funding to connect with children during lockdown.

‘We have posted a copy of The Little Red Hen to every child in the pre-school, and every week we have an activity linked to the book,’ says Ms O’Neill.

Centres of excellence

The Communication Champions scheme is complemented by four Community Communication Champions (CCCs), who work across four localities with high levels of deprivation and low take-up of early years funded places. ‘Their aim is to engage with parents and show them how they can support children’s speech, language and communication development at home,’ says Ms Cater.

Norwich’s Early Childhood and Family Service, settings, schools and health visitors can refer children and families to the programme, and the team also attends local community groups to interact with parents. Children are assessed and parents are supported with activities tailored to their own child.

The CCCs delivered a series of six-week, play-based Let’s Talk At Home workshops alongside Elklan tutors, speech and language therapists from East Coast Community Healthcare. To incentivise parents to complete the course they were given a Springboard Box at the last session, with around 25 different resources to support children’s speech and language development. These included playdough and the instructions to make it, a Duplo set, Velcro food, a wooden phone, a plastic tea set, a book and a linked soft toy.

‘A lot of parents felt that box was something they would never be able to purchase themselves because the cost was quite high,’ says Ms Cater. The third set of workshops was cut short by Covid-19, so the CCCs have been phoning families and sending out weekly activity ideas via email, such as growing plants and making pictures out of natural materials.

Five Communication Hubs, including a recently established 0-2 Hub, aim to act as centres of excellence around communication and language best practice in early years, and points of contact for families to ask for advice and support. They took over the delivery of half-termly network meetings in September, and the OA team hopes they will carry the work forward after the programme ends.

‘The hubs have been successfully growing those networks by reaching out to other local settings and asking if any of them would like to come to a network meeting, to share best practice and discuss any difficulties they have with SCLN (speech, language and communication needs),’ says Ms Cater.

The hubs have been funded for a year, and plan to deliver training packages focusing on four interventions: Word-Aware, Signalong, Elklan, and Talk Boost.

‘We have run some workshops with them on the best ways of applying for funding, how to write bids and so on, so the hope is they work together to find funds for themselves,’ says Ms White.

When Opportunity Areas were set up three years ago, charged with reducing the attainment gap, nobody could have anticipated the current situation. With this gap set to widen, in the coming months and years it will be more important than ever that local and national government are able to draw on the experiences and learnings of these 12 areas.

TARGETS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Targets

• Increase the percentage of children reaching a good level of development to 70 per cent for all children by 2020/21.
• Increase the percentage of children who are eligible for free school meals achieving a good level of development to 55 per cent by 2020/21.

Achievements

• 81 practitioners completed Communication Champions core training, and 54 went on to complete leadership training.
• 13 practitioners completed Elklan’s Speech and Language Support for three-to-fives, two at Level 2 and 11 at Level 3. Thirty-three are still in training.
• Eight practitioners funded to complete a Master’s in Educational Practice and Research.
• 104 parents and 110 children took part in Elklan Let’s Talk at Home sessions.
• The Communication Champions Team has worked with 182 families.