'Assessing speech in children from multilingual backgrounds – current research and clinical applications'

We are pleased to announce the next study day will be jointly run by the South West Speech CEN with the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit. The topic is 'Assessing speech in children from multilingual backgrounds – current research and clinical applications' 

Barbara May Bernhardt and Joe Stemberger are going to present on  “An international cross-linguistic project in typical and protracted phonological development: Clinical Applications”. You can read more about their work at http://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/

We will also have talks along the same theme from Jane Speake (University of Sheffield and previously head of Cambridge) and Rhonwen Lewis (UWIC). The event will end with a panel discussion where attendees can ask questions of the panel. 

More details about the talks  will follow shortly along with the booking information. It will be on Friday 19th October at The Vassall Centre in Bristol and will be an afternoon session (13.30-16.30). We have tried to keep costs low, and it will be £16.31 (which includes eventbrite fees of £1.31)

To book your place please use the eventbrite site: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/assessing-speech-in-children-from-multilingual-backgrounds-tickets-47541983352

Details of presenters and other information will be posted on the CEN facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/SWSpeechCEN

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica Special Edition

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica Special Edition

Themed call: Transcription of children’s speech

Guest Editors: Yvonne Wren, Sharynne McLeod and Sarah Verdon

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica is pleased to announce information about its next special edition on transcription of children’s speech.

The aim of this special edition is to bring together recent research in the field of transcription of children’s speech and understand the implications this has for clinical practice and research activity.

We invite expressions of interest via email to be submitted by May 1st 2018 to Dr Yvonne Wren (yvonne.wren@bristol.ac.uk). Please use ‘Transcription Special Issue’ in the subject line.

Expressions of interest must include:  

1. A proposed title
2. Author names and affiliations
3. Brief author biosketch of no more than 50 words
4. An abstract (no more than 300 words): For papers reporting original research, state the primary objective and any hypothesis tested; describe the research design and your reasons for adopting that methodology; state the methods and procedures employed, including where appropriate tools, hardware, software, the selection and number of study areas/subjects, and the central experimental interventions; state the main outcomes and results, including relevant data (or what you expect to find); and state the conclusions that might be drawn from these data and results, including their implications for further research or application/practice.  For reviews, state the primary objective of the review; the reasoning behind your literature selection; and the way you critically analyse the literature; state the main outcomes and results of your review (or what you expect to find); and state the conclusions that might be drawn, including their implications for further research or application/practice.
5. A statement to indicate that you will be able to submit the manuscript before 30^th September 2018.

The editors (Professor Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sarah Verdon and Dr Yvonne Wren) will review all submissions and invite a select few to be submitted as full manuscripts. Authors will be notified about this by end of May 2018.

All selected submissions will undergo blind peer review.

Estimated formal publication is 2019.

Portsmouth and Southampton families to benefit from research into language delays

BSLTRU would like to congratulate Dr Deborah Gibbard and research team in their successful grant.  The BSLTRU team look forward to working with the Solent NHS Trust investigating children diagnosed with delays in talking.
As part of the research, 160 Portsmouth and Southampton families whose 2- 3 year olds have been clinically diagnosed with early language delay will be invited to participate in a group based programme.
Dr Deborah Gibbard, recipient of the £314,711 grant from the Nuffield Foundation, said 8-10 families per group will receive 10 sessions over a 20 week period as part of the study.
“Our intervention, delivered by a speech and language therapist, is designed to teach parents how to develop their child’s language at home. This has been shown to be broadly effective and we are grateful to the Foundation for supporting our local study to help disadvantaged families in our cities.
According to Dr Gibbard, early treatment for language problems is important to help prevent low educational achievement and poorer outcomes later in life. Additionally, early intervention and parental involvement in treatment has proven beneficial for pre-school children experiencing language development difficulties.
“A pilot project we developed in Portsmouth showed enhanced parent intervention is viable in a community setting. This study will look at the effects on parental skills, attitude, confidence and engagement with treatment, in addition to outcomes for children,” added Dr Gibbard.
Success of the parent groups will be valuable for socially disadvantaged communities given the long lasting effects of children's language delay on education, personality, employment and wider society.
“More importantly, the families will benefit from a reduction in health and social inequalities that impact on the individual, family and wider communities, ensuring children have the best possible start in life.”
The study will, therefore, target socially disadvantaged families and equip parents with skills to help their children overcome language challenges. Families will be recruited through a speech and language therapist, following an initial assessment with the service.
The research trial, which will run from  April 2017 to March 2020, will be led by Dr Gibbard. Other team members include Professor Sue Roulstone of University of West of England, Dr Chris Markham of University of Portsmouth and Dr Clare Smith, speech and language therapist from Solent NHS Trust.

Dr Gibbard can be contacted via deborah.gibbard@solent.nhs.uk for further information.

• For more information about Solent NHS Trust please contact Elton Dzikiti, Public Relations Manager, Solent NHS Trust on 023 8060 8934 or email elton.dzikiti@solent.nhs.uk
• For more information about Nuffield Foundation, please email Fran Bright at fbright@nuffieldfoundation.org

So What's Next - The Communication Trust Research Project

At the start of this month (February 2016) The Communication Trust published a report that we had been commissioned by them to do.  We worked with six schools and heard from 54 children and over 100 parents. The report is available on-line at this link, where you can access the full report and the executive summary free of charge:

www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/involve

We have wanted to provide an additional summary, to tell the parents and children that were involved, what we found and what The Communication Trust will be doing with the report and its findings. We hope that this will be particularly interesting for the children that were involved in the discussions with us, but also in general to children who are involved in decision making at school. It is important for them to know that we value their views and their contributions are being used to improve things for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.  The image is a feedback sheet to work through with the children.

So what are The Communication Trust doing next?

• The research report was emailed out to The Communication Trust’s newsletter audience – that’s 25,000 people who are interested in children and young people’s speech, language and communication.
• It was also sent it to the 52 member organisations of The Communication Trust and their 273 Local Champions who work across England to support children and young people with SLCN.
• The research findings will go directly to the Department for Education at the end of March (2016). They will be able to read the report, ask questions they have about it and find out how many people have been using it in their work.
• Copies of the executive summary will be taken to the Education Show (9000 people attend) and Nasen Live (1000 people attend). This will be an excellent way for people who might not know so much about SLCN to find out more about the perspectives of children and young people with SLCN, and their families, on decision making and involvement.
• The findings from the report have helped The Communication Trust (TCT) to write a toolkit for people who work in schools and colleges to help them with useful ideas and activities to better involve children and young people with SLCN. This toolkit will be available later in February on the TCT website. It will be a really important way of turning the information provided by the children, young people and parents who took part in the research into practical support for teaching and school staff.
• TCT will also make sure that they use all the really useful information from the children, young people and parents in the future work of TCT. 

We NEED your help!

The Communication Trust (TCT) is widely recognised for its provision of research and resources to support the workforce who delivers interventions for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). A particular focus of TCT’s work, with funding from the Department for Education, has been to support the ongoing dissemination of the Better Communication Research Programme (BCRP). One aspect of this work, the development of the ‘What Works’ database, illustrates TCT’s concern to base guidance and support for practitioners on research evidence. TCT has also been commissioned to provide guidance concerning the support of the workforce regarding the involvement of children and young people with SLCN in decisions that concern them. This is in response to the Children and Family Act 2014 and the related Code of Practice which requires that children and young people must be involved in “discussions and decisions about their individual support and local provision” in order to increase participation and inclusion of children and young people, the early identification of needs and the delivery of high quality support. TCT has already developed a resource to support professionals to implement the Code of Practice (“Communicating the Code”) which contains a chapter on the involvement of children and young people with SLCN. TCT intends to develop practical guidance for practitioners to ensure that children and young people with SLCN are fully involved in discussions and decisions about their individual support and about local provision. It is the intention of TCT that this guidance be informed by independent research that investigates the experiences of children and young people with SLCN and their parents of current practice regarding their involvement since the introduction of the Code of Practice and their views of best practice for their involvement in developing their individual support particularly around the setting of outcomes and in developing local services. The Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU) are working with the TCT to achieve this.  But we need your help! Would you be willing to complete a short on-line survey (click here), or maybe take part in a telephone interview (about 30 minutes; email lydia.morgan@speech-therapy.org.uk, or call 0117 340 6529).

Both the survey and the interview are for the parents or carers of a child or young person aged from 0-25 years who has speech, language and communication needs.  This survey is part of a study led by Prof Sue Roulstone (susan.roulstone@uwe.ac.uk) from the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit and the University of the West of England, on behalf of The Communication Trust.

NEW - Guide for commissioners from Better Communication CIC supported by The Communication Trust

The Communication Trust have announced the release of a new resource available to support the commissioning of services for children and young people with SLCN.  This resource is based on the findings of the landmark Better Communication Research Programme commissioned following the Bercow Review.

Prof Sue Roulstone and Dr Yvonne Wren of the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit and the University of the West of England, who led those aspects of the Better Communication Research Programme based here in Bristol, welcomed the new resource: ‘It is very exciting to see such a useful application of our research. Marie Gascoigne, the developer of the resource has a wealth of experience in working with commissioners and has identified the key findings of relevance to the commissioning process”

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

The Bristol Speech& Language Therapy Research Unit are pleased to welcome Dr Penny Levickis on Thursday 9th April from 3.00 to 5.00 pm to speak on:

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

Penny Levickis is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.   After developing a novel mechanism for the rigorous coding of a large number of parent-child interactions as part of her PhD, she demonstrated that specific maternal linguistic behaviours predict preschool language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. She is now extending this work to examine the extent to which maternal responsive behaviours may be measured in addition to the traditional use of low language status in the early years to identify those children most at risk of persistent language impairment. Penny and colleagues are also following up a large community-based cohort of children as they turn 9 years of age to develop a risk chart for health professionals to use as a method of predicting absolute risk of lasting language impairment.

During the afternoon other members of the team at BSLTRU will present other ongoing research about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy.

Venue: Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit, Frenchay Hospital (Yes  -this will be one of the last events in the research unit) Bristol BS16 1LE.

There will be a small charge of £10, payable on arrival to support our costs. Please contact Fay.Smith@speech-therapy.org.uk for further details and register here.

Details of presentations below.

Dr Penny Levickis

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

Penny Levickis is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language (CRE-CL) at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.  After developing a novel mechanism for the rigorous coding of a large number of parent-child interactions as part of her PhD, she demonstrated that specific maternal linguistic behaviours predict preschool language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. She is now extending this work to examine the extent to which maternal responsive behaviours may be measured in addition to the traditional use of low language status in the early years to identify those children most at risk of persistent language impairment. Penny and colleagues are also following up a large community-based cohort of children as they turn 9 years of age to develop a risk chart for health professionals to use as a method of predicting absolute risk of lasting language impairment. 

Inge Klatte

An examination of parent-child interaction therapy in practice

Inge is a Dutch Speech & language therapist completing a three month internship at the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU). For her Master’s degree in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences her thesis is about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).

There is a lot of variation in PCIT approaches: between the original interventions, in the way they have been examined, and, in the way speech and language therapists (SLTs) deliver the intervention. This study aims to find the overlapping, critical components of the PCIT interventions, according to the manuals of the existing approaches, the literature and the SLTs. Also, via interviews Inge will explore the rationales SLTs give for the way they structure their interventions.

    

Dr Yvonne Wren.

Using LENA to explore parent-child interaction

Yvonne is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Institute of Health Research and member of the research team at BSLTRU. As part of the research for her fellowship, Yvonne is exploring the use of LENA, a device for recording and analysing the speech environment of children from 2 months of age upwards. The audio recording device is worn by the child within a t-shirt or similar and records the child’s speech and their environment for 16 continuous hours. Yvonne will share some pilot data on using LENA.

  

Prof Sue Roulstone

Understanding the effectiveness of adult-child interactions as a component of intervention in pre-school children with primary speech and language impairments

Sue is Professor Emeritus at the University of the West of England and a member of the team at BSLTRU. Over the last few years, Sue has led a programme of research called Child Talk which has examined current clinical practice for pre-school children with primary speech and language impairments, identifying the various components of intervention and the related evidence. This presentation will examine the facilitation of adult-child interactions in therapy in relation to other components of intervention and in terms of the underpinning evidence. As well as presenting findings from Child Talk, Sue will present some ideas that are being worked up as bids for further research funding.