Early Intervention Helps Children Communicate in Kent

Taking the Peripatetic Route to Better Communication in Thanet

A pilot project to provide intensive speech and language therapy for pre-school children in their homes and nurseries has been highly successful in helping children with severe communication difficulties make the transition to primary school. The service, piloted in the deprived, east Kent district of Thanet, will be extended to other parts of the district, including Canterbury, next month [April].

This alternative model of Kent’s early intervention scheme, established under the umbrella of communication charity I CAN’S Early Talk Programme, was piloted from September 2008 to July 2009. It involved making best use of existing resources. After the closure of a pre-school unit for children with Specific Language Impairment, the local health trust was able to redeploy a speech and language therapy specialist to provide a peripatetic service.

Children had two sessions a week with a speech and language support worker, one in their nursery with a key worker and the other at home with a parent. After 12 weeks (two terms) of this intensive therapy, parents and nursery staff were provided with all the information they needed to continue to support the children for the next two terms, with monthly visits from the speech and language support worker.

Of the nine children involved in the pilot, seven made clear progress with speech and vocabulary and three of these needed no further intervention. None has so far needed specialist educational provision.

 “That means a lot of children going into primary school with far less need than they used to and some with no further need at all,” says Marie Hackshall, head of paediatric speech and language therapy at NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent Community Services. “That’s quite significant if you think of the severity of their difficulties.”

Feedback from parents included special praise for the way in which they had been involved in helping their children.

“I am the only one who knows my son as well and I was an integral part of the decisions,” said one mother. “In the past I thought; “I wish you would listen to me.” With this intensive input, everything “clicked”; within a few weeks he “unlocked”, he found his voice. This service is great! It helped him calm down with his behaviour. It was a key for many things.”

Now the Thanet peripatetic scheme is being extended from April 1 across more of the coastal areas and Canterbury. Two speech and language support workers will each be employed for three days per week and supported by a skilled therapist one day a month. The team should be able to offer intensive therapy to 20-25 children in Thanet and Canterbury in a full year.

The estimated staff and travel costs of the new Thanet service will be less than £32,500 in a full year – much lower than the cost of the specialist pre-school unit to which these children would previously have gone. The cost per head is also lower than in the Ashford scheme, where children receive therapy in a specialist nursery centre, since there is no need to keep the child’s home nursery placement open for two terms.

 

Top