How Speech Club helps local authorities;
1. EYFS framework regulation changes, Sept. 2023.
Speech Club offers local authorities a simple, effective, evidence based assessment tool to assess children's speech and language skills to support the reporting of EYFS profile results.
2. EHCP - Education, Health, and Care Plans
Speech Club offers Local Authorities an early intervention strategy to mitigate the burgeoning demands of EHCPs.
3. COST - Immediate and Future Financial Savings
Speech Club delivers cost savings today, like recruitment costs for speech and language therapists and teaching assistants, and helps save higher intervention costs in the future.
4. OFSTED Inspections - Ensuring Compliance and Excellence
Speech Club’s evidence-based program helps improve a nursery’s OFSTED rating and provides a tangible demonstration of the strategic and focused application of funds towards addressing educational needs.
1. EHCP - Education, Health, and Care Plans
Speech Club offers Local Authorities an early intervention strategy to mitigate the burgeoning demands of EHCPs.
Speech Club can help provide early intervention to children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) achieve their full potential, helping them avoid the need for an EHCP in the future.
EHCPs pose not only a financial challenge to local authorities but also a recruitment strain due to staff shortages.
Addressing the root causes of this surge is pivotal, and Speech Club emerges as a viable, cost-effective solution.
Engaging in early intervention, particularly in addressing language difficulties of pre-school children, can pave the way to mitigate future costs and resource allocations.
By ensuring that children’s speech and language development is nurtured from the outset, the pressure on EHCPs and children with SEND could be alleviated, thereby aiding in managing both immediate and future demands more proficiently.
Additionally, focusing on early years learning through Speech Club not only adheres to the statutory requirements but also promises to create a foundation for sustainable development in children, aiding them in their future educational journey.
2. COST - Immediate and Future Financial Savings
Speech Club delivers cost savings today, like recruitment costs for speech and language therapists and helps save higher intervention costs in the future.
The financial prudence of allocating budgets wisely to early speech and language interventions, particularly in a context where local authorities are continuously grappling with budget allocations and cost-saving strategies, cannot be overstated.
Speech Club, in this regard, emerges not just as an educational tool but a strategic financial solution, curtailing the immediate costs associated with private therapists and staving off the impending financial implications of future interventions.
Immediate savings on the reduced reliance on teaching assistants, as more children will have the language skills to integrate into the national curriculum without the need for resource-intensive support, like small group sessions or 1:1 support, freeing up scarce resources and saving costs..
Through strategic early intervention, we pave the way for not only safeguarding the developmental journey of children but also insulating local authorities from future financial burdens related to advanced more intensive, and hence, costlier interventions.
3. OFSTED Inspections - Ensuring Compliance and Excellence
Speech Club, being an evidence-based program, not only assists in improving a nursery’s OFSTED rating but also provides a tangible demonstration of the strategic and focused application of funds towards addressing educational needs.
OFSTED inspections are a linchpin in regulating educational standards, but also bring in stress and scrutiny for nurseries and local authorities alike.
Speech Club helps demonstrate a meticulous and need-based allocation of funds and provides evidence that educational needs of children are being addressed.
Showcasing a commitment towards utilising proven methods to enhance early years learning and speech development will undoubtedly stand in good stead during inspections, reflecting a commitment to quality and adherence to regulatory standards.
Essex County Council has piloted Speech Club in 7 nurseries and due to its success, is now rolling out Speech Club to a further 35 nurseries, commencing 2024.
READ OUR CASE STUDY
WITH SPEECH CLUB
IN ESSEX
Fran Neal, Deputy Pre-school Manager, talks about the ease of use of Speech Club and discusses the results they have seen at their nursery in Berkshire, UK.
MEMBERSHIPS CAN BE FUNDED THROUGH:
• Individual parent/carer contributions
• Core nursery funding • Pupil premium
• Local Authority Early Years Inclusion Fund
• EHCP funding • Levelling up funding
Cost
Evidence
Impact (months)
Communication & Language approaches
Very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence.
Claire Whittaker presents Speech Club at the
LGA Early Years Speech & Language Conference
Addressing Challenges in Different Nurseries:
Speech Club’s solutions are adaptable and accessible. Local authorities can now ensure that early speech and language development is not compromised, regardless of the challenges or constraints that individual nurseries may face.
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Addressing Unique Nursery Needs.
Each nursery comes with its unique challenges and needs, and Speech Club provides a flexible and adaptable solution that can be tailored to meet these specific requirements. -
Optimising Staff Time and Resources.
Despite adhering to staff-to-children ratios, time management remains a challenge; Speech Club’s ‘Press Play’ strategy alleviates preparation time and ensures that effective interventions are consistently accessible. -
Teaching Assistants
Using Speech Club alleviates the need for constant scaffolding, enabling teaching assistants to focus on broader educational goals rather than being tied down with intensive, specialised support like 1:1 and small group sessions. -
Ensuring Consistency Amidst High Staff Turnover
Training consistency is compromised with high staff turnover; Speech Club enables all staff members to deliver results uniformly, without fear that training, and knowledge is lost when staff leave. -
Nurseries in Deprived Areas / pop-up nurseries
For nurseries operating in deprived areas, where resource availability might be a significant constraint, Speech Club provides a minimalistic solution, requiring only WIFI access to deliver essential early speech and language development interventions. -
Nurseries with Less Qualified Staff or Volunteers
Speech Club stands as a bridge to ensure that even nurseries with less qualified staff or volunteers can deliver expert-led speech and language interventions, thereby ensuring that the quality of intervention remains uncompromised. -
Managing disruption
Research shows a direct link between diminished language skills and behavioural issues. Speech Club helps enhances children’s ability to communicate and interact effectively with peers and staff and navigate their social environments more harmoniously, reducing frustrations and associated behavioural issues, which also frees staff to focus on teaching.
Due to the success experienced by Essex County Council Claire Whittaker was asked to present Speech Club at the LGA Early Years Speech & Language conference.
