Get Me Talking: promoting language development in young children

An innovative new language development programme for young children in the Western Isles has been developed in partnership by a group of staff in health and education.

Get me Talking, developed by Careen Laird, Occupational Therapist, Ashley Mackay, Speech and Language Therapist, Sally Kane, Education Psychologist and Christina Stewart, Early Years Support Officer, is a programme that has been designed to empower parents with skills to support their child’s early language development through fun and easily accessible activities. The programme has now been created into a package that any play leader/facilitator of a parent and toddler group can use. 

The development of this programme came about to address an increase in referrals to early nursery placements in the Western Isles, due to delayed language development.  A team was established to develop ways to support language development for children up to the age of three. The group of NHS and education professionals agreed that interventions needed to be carried out earlier in a child’s life and that to improve language skills, interventions must be run in partnership with families.

As the team explain in their package: “A baby learns about him or herself, other people and the world by being looked at and responded to, spoken to, sung to, read to and played with. A baby can learn by looking and playing on their own, but the learning is not as rich as when the child is looking at something or playing with something together with an adult. When a parent shares an experience with a baby or child, they give the experience meaning. They give the child a sense of what he or she should feel and they teach the child language that is associated with the experience.”

 The Get Me Talking programme focuses on promoting various key messages and ‘top tips’ that parents and caregivers can use to encourage and promote meaningful and rich interaction and communication with their child. The programme runs over five weeks and each weekly session lasts approximately 40 minutes.  Every week parents/caregivers learn a new key message, such as ‘Face me’, ‘Talk to me’, ‘Play and Explore with me’, and ‘top tips’ for supporting their child’s early language development, which is all carried out through fun activities. 

Each week focuses on a different theme and a number of interactive stations are set up to demonstrate activities that can be easily replicated at home, but these can also be changed to suit individual settings. Parents are encouraged to practise the key message and ‘top tips’ at home. At the end of the programme it is hoped that parents/caregivers will feel more confident when interacting with their child, will engage with their child more and will use more strategies to support their child’s language development.   

Attendees also learn about the importance of messy play, tummy time, reading aloud, as well as guidance on, and the benefits of, limiting screen time.  Information sheets on these topics are included in the Get Me Talking package.

If you are interested in the programme please ask your child’s nursery or local parent and toddler group whether they are or will be running the programme.

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Notes for Editors:

Background: This particular collaboration between Health and Education came about through an opportunity to attend the Scottish Government Children and Young Peoples Improvement Collaborative (CYPIC) Language Meets Literacy Practicum.  NHS Western Isles has been part of the Language Meets Literacy programme since March 2018, where staff have learnt about quality improvement for health/education services and about the importance of collaboration between agencies. 

The Get Me Talking package was developed from this collaboration and the programme has since been trialled around Lewis in various parent/toddler groups. The programme is currently being run in a local authority parent/toddler group, with the plan to spread it to other local authority parent/toddler groups and potentially to all voluntary parent/toddler groups around the Western Isles.