Better Health For All

Stoke Speaks Out was recently the proud recipient of the Advancing Healthcare FPH and PHE award for contribution to Public Health for creating a whole systems approach to tackling speech and language delay across the City of Stoke on Trent.

Our Stoke Speaks Out initiative, based in Stoke-on-Trent and funded by Stoke Local Authority, was commended for the impact we are having on children’s communication development at population level. This is timely in light of the ‘Bercow 10 years on’ review looking at services for children with speech/language and communication needs.

‘Stoke Speaks Out’ is a city-wide, multi-agency approach ensuring children living in areas of high deprivation, receive the best start in life to develop early language and communication skills.

The project, which was started in 2004 and has now developed into a ‘strategy’, focuses on ‘Healthy Beginnings’ and is run by our small multi-agency team. I provide the leadership and am seconded from Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership Trust speech/language therapy department. The core specialist service understands the importance of engaging at Universal and targeted level to ensure the specialist part of the service reaches those who need it most. Our project includes a training programme for the ‘early years’ workforce that emphasises the importance of early attachment and positive parenting on children’s development. Our team is made up of speech and language therapists, communication champions, early years practitioners, reading champions and a project officer.

We are particularly proud of our innovative Early Communication Screen (ECS) tool to improve the school readiness of children from two to five. This is designed to be used by Early Years practitioners who are trained by SLTs in a one-off ECS session, as well as through ongoing support. The screen is designed to identify early language delay and measure children’s progress over time. As a result, practitioners can plan appropriate and targeted interventions.

Over 8,000 children have been screened to date, and taking just 5-10 minutes per child, this is a cost effective, efficient method of early identification which empowers practitioners to detect and support language issues early. We have, to date, trained more than 1,800 regional practitioners to use it.

At the beginning of our school readiness initiative in 2016 only 35% children were on track with their language development. Within 11 months we could quickly demonstrate the impact of our work with 54% children on track. Having a clear picture of the level and detail of need has been really valuable for targeting services and being able to monitor the impact of the work is crucial to future planning. As Stoke is an area of high social deprivation this links strongly to the Department for Education’s social mobility plan and offers a solution to improving children’s outcomes.

Winning the award has been a real boost to the team morale. The team are extremely proud and passionate about their work and are thrilled that this has been recognised nationally. This has led to national interest in our work and enabled us to support other AHPs (allied health professionals) in public health developments.

Written by Janet Cooper, clinical lead speech/language therapist at Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership Trust and lead for Stoke Speaks Out.