Communication Development Profile

This practical resource provides a simple, shared framework to help speech & language therapists work more effectively with the families, carers and teachers of children with severe and profound learning disabilities. The profile immediately improves the way therapists support and advise teachers and families, and consequently results in a more united and holistic approach towards the child's development. It provides a clear descriptive breakdown of five key areas of language and communication development from birth to the development and use of grammatical sentences. Areas are: attention; comprehension (what the child understands); expression (how the child communicates); sound system; and, use of communication (what and why the child communicates). It creates an individual and visual representation of the child's development across each of these key areas, facilitating joint discussion and identification of the skills most needing support. It enables information from therapists' assessments and parents' or teachers' informal observations and experiences to be combined creating a more equal and share view of the child's skills in their everyday life. It links to the P-Levels, expanding on the descriptions of the skills expected at each stage and focusing on the core developmental changes expected at each level, therefore providing an invaluable joint resource for teachers and speech & language therapists to use together. It establishes the communicative phase that the child is working within, therefore enabling the most appropriate style of speech and language therapy intervention to be identified, based on the child's developmental learning style and needs. It results in a reduction in dissatisfaction and misunderstandings when identifying targets and setting activities with both teachers and families, and in agreeing speech & language therapy provision. This profile is an essential tool for all therapists working with children with learning disabilities. It improves multi-disciplinary assessments; enables parents to have an informed and genuine role; makes target setting in educational settings directly relevant to the curriculum; expands on the P-Levels and better describes them; and, enables the therapist to explain their thought processes, which all lead to better goal-setting and a cohesive communication development strategy for the child.

Charlotte Child is a speech & language therapist specialising in working with children and young adults with learning disability in a wide variety of settings.

Introduction; Resources and terminology; Communication phases and intervention; Attention control; Development of intentionality; Comprehension; Expression; Speech sound development; Use of communication skills; Joint attention, interaction and communication; Appendices.