Nursery World - Opinion: In my view

The need for good speaking, listening and communication skills in the early years has, rightly, shot up the agenda in recent years, with the Bercow Report and the Every Child a Talker programme.

Good communication is vital to the development of children's social and emotional well-being as well as to their learning. This forms the basis of the work of the National Literacy Trust's Talk To Your Baby campaign.

The Sure Start programme encouraged the development of many fine early communication initiatives. Most were locally based and often short-term funded, so, with funding from the JJ Charitable Trust, Talk To Your Baby set out to see how these and others could be turned into long-term, sustainable strategies across local areas. Dr Cathy Hamer undertook a pilot project in the West Midlands to explore what was working, what factors needed to be resolved and what we could do to help.

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