Promoting early years speech, language and communication: key insights from the Small Steps Big Changes Programme

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Dr Nadine Otting, Research and Learning Officer, Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC), shares the programme’s learning from their early years speech, language and communication work.

Nearing a decade of SSBC’s test-and-learn approach to promoting early years speech and language

Dr Nadine Otting

Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC) operates in Nottingham City, with a focus on four city wards that include areas of considerable ethnic diversity. Working with parents, SSBC has developed and is delivering a programme of support and activities for families with children up to age four. The focus in on promoting good early childhood development, with speech, language and communication as one of the key outcome areas. Over the past nine years, SSBC’s test-and learn approach has gathered learning and insight through research and evaluation. We are now nearing the end of the ten-year programme and are focussing on legacy building and telling the SSBC story. Here, we want to highlight the successful approaches that can make a difference to babies and young children’s speech and language outcomes and share key insights to inspire system change.

Recognising parents as important agents of change in children’s development

SSBC’s core principle is “Children at the heart, parents leading the way, supported and guided by experts.” Parents play a vital role in their babies and children’s speech and language development as their most important communication. The home learning environment is especially important in the early years and builds in the foundations of health, learning and wellbeing. While the socio-economic structures that surround families’ lives influence children’s development, research indicates that what you do with your child is more important than who you are.1 Promoting behaviour change within families is a powerful means to improve children’s speech and language outcomes. Supporting parents and caregivers to have high quality, communication-rich interactions with their babies and children has the potential to improve children’s development.

A tapestry of support for babies and young children’s speech and language

Families have been able to access a variety of speech and language support throughout their SSBC journeys. The tapestry of speech and language support enables parents to participate in the SSBC programme in a way that suits their individual needs. The support offer has included a mix of universal and targeted support, provided at home or in the community, with online options added during the Covid pandemic. A few examples have previously featured as part of this article series, including Sojo Animations, Literacy Champions, Talking Tots and Babies and Small Steps for Your English.

Furthering the evidence base for impactful interventions

Independent evaluations by Nottingham Trent University2 highlight the positive impacts of the SSBC programme. For example, one-year Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) scores show that children who received more visits from the Small Steps at Home programme, delivered by Family Mentors, scored significantly higher in the ASQ communication domain. Two-year ASQ scores show that children who participated for over 18 months achieved the highest overall scores, excelling in four of the five ASQ domains, including communication. Moreover, the book gifting programme Dolly Parton Imagination Library has been shown to promote behaviour change in shared book reading of parents with their child. The longer families participated in the DPIL programme, the more parents had interactions with their children whilst reading a book, the longer reading sessions they had, and the more they read to their children on a daily basis.3

Key takeaways around early years speech, language and communication from the SSBC programme

  • Increased Need: The pandemic has led to an increase in speech, language, and communication needs, making it more critical to support parents in building capacity at home to support their child’s development.
  • Co-production: Collaborating with families ensures that services are tailored to meet local needs and that interventions are both acceptable and feasible.
  • Strengthening the home learning environment: Providing resources enhances the home learning environment, empowering parents to support their children effectively.
  • Support for multilingual families: Providing books in families' home languages and translated resources promotes use of the home language, especially for parents who are not fluent English speakers. The home language scaffolds children’s English learning, with a view of emphasising the benefits of multilingualism, rather than viewing it as a complication.
  • System-wide approach: The need for early years speech and language support is too great for any single service to meet. A coordinated response and shared understanding among all providers, services and those working with families is essential to ensure consistent messaging and clear signposting and support pathways for parents.
  • Evaluation and intervention fidelity: In a challenging funding environment, demonstrating the impacts of speech and language services is vital for their ongoing improvement and continuation. There is a need to remain considerate of delivering interventions as intended by their design to be able to evidence impacts.

References

1 Sylva, K. ed., 2009. Early childhood matters. Taylor & Francis.

2 Lushey, C., Tura, F., Toft, A., Harding, R., Bickerton, C., Cassidy, S., Cooper, S., Davies, K., Fleming, J., Huntington, B., Jameel, A., Law, S., Newham, K., Pandya-Wood, J., Rathore, G., Slater, J., Tarczynski-Bowles, L., Thompson, R., & Wardle, L. (2023). Evaluation of Small Steps Big Changes: Final Report 2023. [online] Available at www.smallstepsbigchanges.org.uk

3 Tura, F., Wood, C., Thompson, R & Lushey, C. (2021): Evaluating the impact of book gifting on the reading behaviours of parents and young children, Early Years, DOI: 10.1080/09575146.2021.1908234

About A Better Start

A Better Start is a ten-year (2015-2025), £215 million programme set-up by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

Five A Better Start partnerships based in Blackpool, Bradford, Lambeth, Nottingham and Southend are supporting families to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. Working with local parents, the A Better Start partnerships are developing and testing ways to improve their children’s diet and nutrition, social and emotional development, and speech, language and communication.

The work of the programme is grounded in scientific evidence and research. A Better Start is place-based and enabling systems change. It aims to improve the way that organisations work together and with families to shift attitudes and spending towards preventing problems that can start in early life. It is one of five major programmes set up by The National Lottery Community Fund to test and learn from new approaches to designing services which aim to make people’s lives healthier and happier

The National Children’s Bureau is coordinating an ambitious programme of shared learning for A Better Start, disseminating the partnerships’ experiences in creating innovative services far and wide, so that others working in early childhood development or place-based systems change can benefit.

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