Sheering Village Pre-School CIC
A Speech and Language Screening Toolkit
WellComm is a tookit designed to help early years settings identify children from six months to six years old who might be experiencing delays with speech and language. It can then help put immediate interventions into place, while waiting for a more formal assessment.
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An early start
All children entering pre-school are screened to establish a baseline. Usually this happens about two weeks after they have started but there are some exceptions. We wouldn’t screen a child who was very unsettled, for example.
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WellComm operates a simple traffic light system of banding children in one of three categories. Green means no intervention is currently required, amber means extra support and intervention and red means consider referral to a specialist service for further advice and give extra support and intervention. After assessment, we put in place immediate interventions for those who don’t achieve the green band. We look at the results to see areas where there are groups of children who need to work on the same targets.
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Timely action
WellComm comes with The Big Book of Ideas, a collection of over 1,000 play-based activities, effective in meeting the individual needs identified during the screening process. It offers invaluable support in deciding how best to address areas that require improvement, for example through focused questions, story time or play based learning.
Being able to offer practical help to children straight away is fantastic. We can also re-screen to check they are progressing.
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Results are shared with parents and with primary schools when a child moves up to reception classes.
Benefits of WellComm
• Helps to quickly identify two, three and four year olds with speech and language development issues
• The Big Book of Ideas ensures intervention resources are readily available to move children forward immediately.
• Traffic light system means it is easy to spot where children are struggling and monitor progress
• Shows ways of developing the curriculum to support speech, language and communication in a meaningful way through an increased awareness of children’s needs.
• Evidence based assessment which supports referrals to speech therapy services and enhances language programmes in place for children with speech, language and communication difficulties