Speech, Language and Communication: Unique Child

• Delays in speech developing.
• Difficulty producing speech sounds and difficult understanding.
• Smaller vocabulary than their peers, and progress is slow.
• Difficulty with putting words together or sentences are.
• Has difficulty understanding simple instructions, without environmental and situational cues, or responses are slow and inconsistent.
• Difficulty responding to questions.
• Has difficulty maintaining attention.
• Delayed development identified in communication and language.
• ECAT assessment shows delay (alert to checkpoint statements).

Practitioners need to have a robust knowledge of child development to enable them to understand children’s developmental needs and identify when children are experiencing delays or differences in developing their speech, language, and communication. Speech, language, and communication needs are usually identified in communication with parents and carers, through day-to-day interactions and observations, and subsequently assessments procedures such as the two-year-old check. Assessment tools can effectively supplement this when a practitioner understands development well.

For all children:

• Development Matters is non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage.
• Birth to 5 Matters is non-statutory guidance for the early years foundation stage.

May be useful for children who have wider developmental concerns, or identified SEND:

• Cambridgeshire Practitioner Developmental Journal [Size: 434 KB, File: DOCX].

For children whom you want to look more closely at their speech, language, and communication needs:

• ECAT assessment [link needed]