Press Release

Yasmin Qureshi MP is today pledging to speak up for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs and their families.

Yasmin Qureshi MP’s pledge comes as I CAN, the children’s communication charity, and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) publish a 1st Anniversary Update of Bercow: Ten Years On – an independent review of provision for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs in England.

The update reveals that in the year since Bercow: Ten Years On was published there has been some encouraging action from Government. This has included the Department for Education’s focus on closing the word gap and the decision to recommission joint special educational needs and disability inspections from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. In total, 17 of the review’s 47 recommendations have been achieved.

However, there is much still to be done. There are five areas where urgent action is needed to improve the life chances of the 1.4 million children and young people with speech, language and communication needs in the UK and the 50% of children who can start school with delayed language or another identified communication need in areas of social disadvantage. The five areas for urgent action are:

1. Joint commissioning locally between health and education services to ensure children and young people’s needs are identified and appropriately supported;
2. Support for children and young people with long-term speech, language and communication needs so they receive the help they and their families need;
3. Professional development of those working with children and young people, particularly teachers and teaching assistants, so they are able to recognise and respond to children and young people’s communication needs;
4. Incentivising schools to give speech, language and communication the priority it deserves; and
5. Vulnerable groups, where there is a higher prevalence of communication needs (for example, those excluded from school, looked after, in the justice system, and with mental health problems), receive the support they, their families and those working with them require.

Following the publication of the 1st Anniversary Update, a broad coalition of over 60 organisations working across education, health and social care, justice, disability and poverty, and representing parents and carers, charities and professional bodies, have written an open letter to the Prime Minister about the need to improve support for the more than 10% of children and young people in the UK who have speech, language and communication needs.

Yasmin Qureshi MP: ‘As someone for whom speaking and communicating are a way of life, I appreciate the fundamental importance of communication and its impact on all areas of our lives and on our life chances. I will press the Government to accept the recommendations that I CAN and the RCSLT are making to help improve support for those children and young people in my constituency who have speech, language and communication needs, and their families.’