By Eleanor Johnson, Early Years Teacher and Creator of StoryPhones, the MP3 Digital Audio System.

I have spent many years working in Early Years settings and I know that children’s speech, language and communication skills are always high on any practitioner’s list of concerns. We are all aware that it is vital that young children develop good communications skills. These skills are the foundation of children’s literacy and learning without them, even something as straight forward as listening to a story, can be a struggle for some children.

Fortunately over the last few years the awareness the importance of speech, language and communication has been raised through the Bercow Report which reviewed the services for  speech, language and communication in 2008, then in 2009 with the ‘Every Child a Talker’ initiative. Many nurseries and schools have benefitted from this two year scheme.

This year has seen the launch of The Communication Trust’s Year of Communication ‘Hello’ Campaign. This campaign has been gathering strength as each month passes. If you’ve not had a chance to visit the Hello Campaign website, I highly recommend a look. Of course, charities such as ICAN and AFASIC continue to support children and families with speech, language and communication difficulties.

It’s important that everyone knows how communication difficulties impact on our children and the long term implications for their education and lifelong learning. This was highlighted beautifully recently when BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ran two articles regarding research which found that some children are arriving in nursery not knowing their own name. This opened up this issue to the general public and further programmes and interviews popped up on the radio all through the day. The overall impression I gained was how shocked many people, who were not involved with the care or education of children, were that this could occur. If you would like to listen to these interviews then you can find a link on our Facebook page  www.facebook.com/StoryPhones.

Making a difference to children’s communication skills involves all of us, parents, carers, practitioners, speech and language therapist and health visitors. Understanding what is needed to help our children develop good communication skills often involves the simplest of activities and ideas. Just a little bit of knowledge and understanding can go a long way.

There are many organisations and websites which offer fantastic advice, information and free resources for practitioners and families. To save you time I’ve come up with a list of some of them below:

www.hello.org.uk
www.nationalliteracytrust.org.uk
www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk
www.bookstart.org.uk
www.ican.org.uk
www.afasicengland.org.uk
www.singup.org
www.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio

You may find them useful to share with your children’s parents and carers. This is by no means an exhaustive list: if anyone comes across other good websites I would really like to hear about them so I can share the information with others. Please feel free to comment here or email me at eleanor@ameeca.co.uk.

You can also come and meet with Eleanor at Childcare Expo 2011 on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th September at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry. StoryPhones will be on stand B37.