Bercow 10 years on: SLCN provision

Hello there, thank you so much for stopping by, it really is lovely to have you here.

I hope you're enjoying the beautiful sunny weather we are having, and staying cool! The watermelon ice-lollies in our freezer are definitely calling to me today.

I have wanted to do a blog post about this topic, which is very close to my speechie heart, for a while…so here we are!

Today is the 100th day of the #Bercow10 campaign… let me explain what this is all about!

The Bercow report was first published 10 years ago in 2008, lead by John Bercow, to highlight the current situation of provision for children with SLCN in the UK. The report showed numerous inadequacies in support and lack of sufficient services and recommended guidance to increase services to sufficient levels for the population.
(This link provides some overview and signposting to more information, if you’re interested in reading more: https://www.rcslt.org/about/campaigns/bercow_review)

Ten years on, and the continuing insufficiency of SLCN provision prompted the 'Bercow 10 Years On' report.

I CAN, the children's communication charity and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT), have published a review of the provision for speech, language and communication for children and young people who have Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN).

You can find out more about Bercow 10 Years On, recommendations and calls to action here: https://www.bercow10yearson.com.
Briefly, the main findings from this report are:

• The lack of awareness of communication skills for children and how vitally important these skills are,
• Support for SLCN is not a feature in many national policies and many local services do not reflect the need for this SLT intervention,
• Services are not accessible nation-wide, and often services are planned according to funding rather than the need,
• Services are based on current service design, rather than Evidenced Based Practice (EBP)
• SLCN are being missed in children and so they are not having access to the support they need.

(https://www.bercow10yearson.com/findings/)

The wonderful SLT Gillian Rudd created a Government Petition to call for a change in the funding and provision for SLT services, and this week we reached 10,000 signatures! On behalf of all children and young people with SCLN, please consider signing the petition:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/215643, our goal is to gather enough support for this matter to be considered for debate in Parliament.

Speech and language therapists, and SLT students across the country have been raising awareness of the report and the lack of sufficient SLCN provision. The #Bercow10relay has been all over my twitter feed for the past few months and has reached far and wide, which is very exciting. You might have already seen our photos with the #Bercow10 speech bubble in my previous blog posts (https://speechieatdmu.blogspot.com/2018/06/rcslt-east-midlands-hub-lets-get.html, https://speechieatdmu.blogspot.com/2018/06/part-two-rcslt-east-midlands-hub-lets.html)
We were contacted by the RCSLT for DMU to have our very own speech bubble as part of the campaign, below are a few photos from the DMU Leicester leg of the relay!

I wanted to include a few of my thoughts around communication, how important these skills are, and the impact on this significant lack of support for children and young people. I hope it helps to put the report and petition into some context:

Communication is the building block for almost anything you can think of, from popping to get some milk from the shop, going for a job interview, to speaking to your nan on the phone and understanding the plot of your favourite TV series. Speech and language development is very complex, even for typically developing children, and it requires so much input, care and support from adults in the child’s life. Supporting children and young people with their speech, language and communication skills is so vitally important – the phrase ‘prevention rather than cure’ comes to mind.

However, when a child has SLCN they need targeted SLT support, in addition to this daily input from adults, to be able to communicate, participate in their daily lives, access their education and reach their potential. The absence of this robust, consistent and specialist intervention results in children and young people not fully understanding written and spoken language, and not being able to communicate due to speech and/or language difficulties. This then has a knock-on-effect on their social development and life chances; making friends, play, self esteem, mental health, confidence, as well as education attainment.

We can see the domino-effect this causes throughout the population from behavioural difficulties due to lack of an effective method of communication, offending behaviour and young people lacking the communication and language skills to be able to work.

To round off this post, I have quoted some powerful statistics from the RCSLT (found at https://www.rcslt.org/influencing/key_stats)

that really help illustrate the need for SLCN support:

• “Over 50% of children in socially deprived areas may start school with impoverished speech, language and communication skills”
• “Over 60% of young people in the youth justice estate have communication difficulties”
• “88% of long-term unemployed young men have speech, language and communication needs”
• “Vocabulary difficulties at age 5 are significantly associated with poor literacy, mental health and employment outcomes at age 34”
• “1 in 3 children with untreated speech and language difficulties will develop subsequent mental health problems, with resulting criminal involvement”

(All references for these statistics can be found at https://www.rcslt.org/influencing/key_stats)

Thank you so much for reading and for signing the Bercow10 petition, it’s very much appreciated! As always, please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email (speechieatdmu@gmail.com) I’d love to chat! Happy #100DaysofBercow10!

Lastly, if you haven't already, you can pop over and sign the petition here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/215643!