There is “a real connection” between communication and behaviour, according Glenn Carter, head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ (RCSLT) Scotland office.
When you give children the support they need to express their “needs and wants” that is “a really powerful tool” for improving behaviour, he said this week.
But children’s communication skills have deteriorated in the wake of the pandemic, and it is now estimated that there are over a quarter of a million children and young people in Scotland with speech, language or communication needs.
In a 2023 survey of early years practitioners conducted by RCSLT Scotland with Early Years Scotland, 89 per cent of early years professionals said they had seen an increase in the number of children with communication needs and the complexity of those needs.
Putting speech and language therapists in schools
Public Health Scotland, meanwhile, reported last year that there had been a rise in speech development concerns recorded by health visitors compared with pre-pandemic.
Mr Carter said: “We’re hearing from early years practitioners saying that pre-Covid they had a small group of non-talkers and a group of talkers, as they define it. But post-Covid that’s been flipped.”
The solution, as Mr Carter is concerned, is “to be brave and stop doing what doesn’t work”.
He made his comments yesterday when he told the MSPs carrying out an inquiry into additional support for learning that, instead of delivering interventions in community clinics, speech and language therapists should be based in schools, to be closer to the children who need them.
“Specialists should be closer to the population [they work with],” he said. “Where are the population? They are in schools, they are in nurseries. That’s where we should be located, in my view.”
Taking a child out of school, making an intervention and then “expecting them to be fixed” was not working, Mr Carter said.
Instead, he argued that “a whole-system approach” was needed, with speech and language therapists working with schools and teachers “to improve the environment” and “the way we interact with kids”.
‘Throwing training at people’
Mr Carter said that training for teachers was “important” but that “throwing training at people rarely works without follow up”.
“We need quality training, but the thing that facilitates behaviour change and a shift in how we facilitate kids’ communication is being in there and coaching and modelling with other people,” he said.
As well as “transformation” of the delivery of speech and language therapy services, Mr Carter said that “adequate resources” were needed.
Speech and language therapy was, he said, “extremely vulnerable to cuts”.
Earlier this month Aberdeenshire Council cut speech and language therapy support from schools in a bid to save £200,000 over the next financial year. The council said the NHS would continue to provide “direct therapeutic services to children” but the move does mean school-based support will end.
‘Unacceptable’ waiting times
Already, waiting times for communication support are lengthy.
Using freedom of information legislation, the RCSLT provided a snapshot for May last year: there were 6,503 children waiting for speech and language therapy in Scotland, while a substantial number had to wait over a year for initial contact with a service.
It is “unacceptable” for a child to wait that long, said Mr Carter, who added that this would have “a very significant impact on the outcomes”.
He also underlined that waiting times and lists only measure the number of people in the queue, as opposed to demand, which would inevitably be far higher.
Mr Carter said that when speech and language therapy was delivered closer to the people needing it, that “unveiled” demand.
He added: “The most vulnerable people living in poverty, we can’t expect them to travel two bus rides to a community clinic to access services - it’s got to be delivered closer to home.”
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