Speech and Language Difficulties

Speech by Annette Brooke MP delivered to House of Commons, Westminster Hall on Tue 28th Nov 2006

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who was inspiring, as he usually is on this subject. I hope that my good neighbour, the Minister, will be duly inspired by the very good speeches that we have heard. I congratulate all who spoke, but particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), who brought his own special visual aid. I hope that we will all be able to share that information and that it can eventually be used to help our constituents.

This subject has been highlighted before. The important Rose review states:

"Speaking and listening, together with reading and writing, are...central to children's intellectual, social and emotional development."

My party currently has a four Rs commission, in which the fourth R is articulation. As we have heard throughout the debate, poor skills in those areas go on to affect behaviour. It is not surprising that children who are not understood try to communicate in other ways that are less then satisfactory to most of us. Young children who do not have educational attainments are held back throughout their adult lives, and may become involved in criminal activity. I do not suggest that all people who have language problems and speech impairments will go on to become criminals, but a high proportion of prisoners have those inabilities. It is therefore important to take on board the impact of those problems on our society.

It is important to appreciate that speech and language therapy is complex and covers a spectrum, from children with transient language difficulties-their number is increasing simply because of our lifestyles and because people do not talk enough in the home-through to children with the persistent difficulties about which we have heard a lot today. Clearly, early intervention is key-indeed, there appears to be a critical age by which speech and language skills should be developed to prevent problems with subsequent development. A longitudinal study found that children whose language difficulties were resolved by age five and a half were more likely to go on to develop good reading and spelling skills. Many children's communication difficulties are transient and can be resolved through early intervention. As we have heard over and over again, if children do not get that early intervention, the costs to society are large. As well as needing specialists, we need our mainstream teachers to have an understanding of communication, because many of the transient problems could be picked up in the classroom setting. For that to happen, we need all our early-years teachers to be suitably trained on this issue.

I do not want to go into the whole debate about mainstream schooling and inclusion, but I can go back 20 years and think of children and young people who were in special schools but who would not have been there if they had received speech and language therapy. That is critical. We have, to a large extent, moved on with the Government's agenda, but we know that children who are included, particularly those with more complex needs, are not getting adequate support in mainstream schools. We should keep in mainstream education children who simply need a year's course of speech therapy and will then be able to access all of the main curriculum, but it is crucial that children who are included should receive that full support.

Statistics show that one in 10 children in the UK have communication problems, but I suggest that as many as 50 per cent. of five-year-olds arrive at school without the speech and language skills that they need to participate fully and to achieve their potential. The majority of children with communication problems are educated in mainstream schools, and we know that communication problems can accompany other disabilities. We need to take on board the fact that a large number of children with statements of special educational needs have been identified as having speech, language and communication difficulties. As the hon. Member for Buckingham said, in our debate on the Select Committee on Education and Skills report, we discussed at great length the point that the money available must match up with the requirements set out on the statements.

Many MPs have supported the Make Chatter Matter campaign and have signed up to the early-day motion on it. The campaign is all about giving information to parents and having skilled staff, communication-friendly early-years settings and specialist provision. The debate is timely because I visited Carden nursery in Brighton just a week ago to see an interesting project initiated by I CAN. The nursery is on a school site and has children in mainstream sessions but pulls out 10 children in the morning and 10 in the afternoon for special sessions. Those sessions are intensive and involve three adults working with a maximum of 10 children. I was able to watch the sessions without the children seeing us, and have learned about Makaton and cued articulation. I also learned that most of those three and four-year-olds had been identified as having language difficulties by their health visitors, so I make a plea: we must have a sufficient number of health visitors to pick up those problems at an early stage. All the children there have a relatively high level of cognitive development, and the intensive work will almost certainly result in all of them ultimately accessing mainstream education-it will allow many of them to go straight into mainstream schools at five. The project is obviously expensive, but will save money in the long run.

How big is the problem? Do our local authorities know the extent of it, taking into account the whole range of communication and language difficulties? We know that the general shortage of speech and language therapists means that children in some areas are unable to access crucial services; there is a postcode lottery. The Education and Skills Committee report on special educational needs highlighted problems in partnerships with health authorities. There is a lack of joining up. In the past three months, I have had problems with children being allocated to a nursery school in the county council area that is not their parents' first choice, which takes them out of their primary care trust area. It has been a huge battle to get therapeutic services aligned to individual children. That is outrageous, especially for the poor parents who are in the middle of it all and who had to accept placements for their children that they did not want in the first place. They should not have to battle or come to their MP to sort out such problems.

Evidence submitted to the Select Committee highlighted that issue, and the Committee responded by calling for a national strategy. The Government's response to the report, particularly on page 8, made me see red. I will add another word to those used by the hon. Member for Buckingham to describe it. Complacent-that is how I would sum it up. It is good news that there is some research coming through from Canterbury Christ Church university, but even so, I am concerned. We have heard that the budgets of 78 per cent. of speech and language therapy services across the UK have been reduced or frozen, and we know that speech and language therapy graduates have been unable to find jobs. Furthermore, there is a boom and bust problem: my local university, Bournemouth university, and other universities are saying that PCTs are not commissioning places for the future. So not only do we have unemployed speech and language therapists now, but in four years we will not have enough therapists coming through. That is ridiculous.

I know that I CAN has proposed a programme to the Minister in respect of its Early Talk course. I do not want to promote a particular provider, but I hope that the Minister will give due considerations to the I CAN's proposals.

Today, we have heard about Oliver, Maria and Jade. I agree that we need to get a grip on the procedures for restraining children, as we discussed in the Committee that considered the Education and Inspections Bill. The point, however, is that there are hundreds of thousands of children with specific needs, and we are not doing our best for them.

Link to full debate: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm061128/halltext/61128h0003.htm#06112879000478