Meeting speech, language and communication needs: a whole-systems, population-based approach

Abstract

Speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) remain one of the main areas of concern impacting children and young people's life outcomes. This article sets out the case for taking a population-health based approach to anticipating need and building whole systems around children in their functional contexts, whether home, early years setting, school or further education. The demand on services providing speech and language therapy continues to increase year on year. Using a population-health approach to predicting areas of higher anticipated SLCN and establishing robust collaborative approaches to improving the context for children and young people vulnerable to SLCN, there is the potential to address a significant number needs within everyday contexts. This approach continues to require a highly skilled speech and language therapy workforce. For maximum impact, those skills should be deployed in the places children and young people live, learn and have leisure, working directly with children but also ensuring the wider workforce are supported to enable early identification, prevention, and intervention. This approach requires a move away from a traditional referral model to one of easy access to expertise. Finally, the implications for paediatric services and the opportunities presented by a different way of using the multi-disciplinary team are proposed.