Children's secretary Ed Balls and care services minister Phil Hope announced a £5m package of measures, including a £1.5m, three-year research programme, led by the University of Warwick, which will investigate whether interventions for children with speech, language and communication needs are cost-effective.
The funding is part of the Government's Better Communication action plan, published in December as a response to the findings of the Bercow review, which made 40 key recommendations on how to improve services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (News, 17 December 2008).
Other measures include a £2m pilot scheme to identify good practice in providing support for children through joint working of organisations such as PCTs and local authorities. The 16 pilot areas have been named as Trafford, Walsall, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, North Tyneside, Oxfordshire, Plymouth, Southampton, Hertfordshire, Hounslow, Lambeth, London Specialised Commissioning Group, North Lincolnshire, Devon, Hackney and Hartlepool.
Twelve organisations, which include City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, the Dame Hannah Rogers Trust and Milton Keynes PCT, that work to support children with alternative and augmentative communication needs are to gain £500,000 funding under the plans. They use alternative methods to help children who find it hard to communicate by reading and writing using equipment such as picture charts and electronic systems.
Ed Balls said, 'We are determined to remove the barriers some children face when trying to communicate by giving them the easily accessible support they need. John Bercow's review identified that local services need to improve. We are now implementing his recommendations to make that happen.'
