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.