Early Voices – Free professional development for HVs on speech, language and communication

The Communication Trust’s new programme Early Voices offers a unique opportunity to health visitors to access free professional development and training to increase their knowledge in early speech language and communication development in order to achieve higher impact with the families that they work with.

The Early Voices programme seeks to recruit health visitors to take on the role of ‘Communication Leader’ in their locality. Communication Leaders will receive a fully-funded place on a Level 3 Award in speech, language and communication, and additional training from The Communication Trust (TCT).

TCT training will outline the expected levels of early speech language and communication development, advice on how to share this information and evidence-based strategies with parents, and where to signpost parents to access further support. To broaden the reach of this knowledge, Communication Leaders will cascade their learning via two TCT-designed sessions to their local early years networks.

For more information and how to apply

Application deadline – 11 April 2018

New report from The Communication Trust

Professional development in speech, language and communication – new report from The Communication Trust.

Last summer, more than 1200 members of the children and young people’s workforce, including many health visitors, responded to a survey from The Communication Trust, which asked about their experiences of professional development in speech, language and communication (SLC). Their responses revealed that, although they were nearly unanimous in their belief in the vital importance of children’s SLC skills, there were significant gaps in their professional development in this area. The majority (53%) reported that they had had little to no initial training in typical speech, language and communication development, and 60% had little to no training in identifying and supporting children with speech, language and communication needs.

In England, there are likely to be at least two children in every primary school classroom with a clinically significant language disorder, and many more with delayed language development. The Communication Trust, in partnership with their consortium, works to maximise the impact of the voluntary sector and collaborate with government to devise effective solutions to improve the support that is provided to children and young people.

The Communication Trust has produced a report presenting the findings of their consultation with the workforce and offering recommendations to government and national bodies, local authorities and commissioners, the voluntary sector and training providers, and the workforce and service providers. Their recommendations were developed in consultation with their consortium and other key sector, practitioner, and academic partners.

Download Communication Trust survey report

Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF)

The Communication Trust works to support the workforce in enabling all the children and young people they work with to communicate to the best of their ability through resources such as the newly updated and improved Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF). The SLCF is a free online professional development tool which sets out the skills and knowledge that everyone working with children and young people need in order to support the speech, language and communication development of those they work with. The SLCF self-evaluation tool enables individuals and groups of practitioners to highlight their professional development needs and to find training, resources or information to ‘fill the gaps’ identified by the SLCF.

Find out more about the SLCF

If you have any queries on this, please contact [email protected]

Professional development survey and prize draw opportunity from The Communication Trust

The Communication Trust is a coalition of over 50 not-for-profit organisations, they support everyone who works with children and young people in England to support their speech, language and communication.

They are seeking the views of those who work with children and young people about their experiences of professional development opportunities around speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). They’ve developed a short survey to gather the views of a wide range of practitioners including health visitors.

The Trust wants to hear from everyone, whether you’ve never had any CPD or initial training around children’s communication, or have accessed a number of development opportunities in this area, your views are vital to their work.

Go to Communication Trust Survey and enter a £50 Amazon voucher prize draw

Please note that the survey closes 15 July.

Once you’ve completed the survey, please do forward the link onto all of your relevant colleagues to help them gather as many views as possible.