The impact of COVID 19 on children’s SLCN
Covid has had a huge impact on children’s abilities to understand language and use language in order to communicate with others.
Covid also reduced the amount of social interaction that children were exposed to, meaning that skills such as joint attention, turn taking and participating in small groups are sometimes difficult for children. Covid also had an impact on all services with increased waiting lists.
How SLCN can impact the progress of children at nursery
Speech, language and communication are the building blocks for a child’s learning and development and have a huge impact on a child’s ability to develop in a nursery setting.
Early intervention has huge benefits for children who are displaying speech, language and communication difficulties. Some of the benefits include:
- Listening and attention
- Play
- Understanding instructions
- Putting words into sentences
- Producing sounds accurately and speaking clearly
- Understanding and remembering new vocabulary
- Remembering instructions and information
- Understanding non verbal communication
- Inferencing and ‘reading between the lines’
- Answering how and why questions
- Speaking fluently and confidently
- Making and maintaining friendships
- Understanding sayings and idioms (see below!)
Training for nurseries
Seaside SaLT provides training in nursery settings helping staff recognise and support speech, language and communication needs. Training packages include:
→ Creating communication friendly environments
→ Using total communication approach
→ Recognising SLCN in 0-4 year olds
→ Typical Developmental Milestones in children aged 0-4 years
→ Supporting staff to deliver care plans and therapy programs
→ Working with children who are pre-verbal
