Confidence
All but one parent reported an increase in confidence post-intervention. Where a change in confidence was not reported, confidence had remained at the upper end of the self-rating scale. No parents reported a decrease in confidence.
Parent’s Behaviours
Talk and Play (TAP) Practitioners observed an increase in the amount and frequency of Adult Child Interactions (ACI) strategies being used by all parents/ guardians participating in the intervention.
Children’s Speech, Language and Communication (SLC) Skills
All children were assessed using Sections 1,2 and 3 of the WellComm and were given a combined score of these sections to compare data pre and post intervention. The following chart indicates number of assessment items achieved pre intervention (blue) and further items achieved post-intervention (grey).
Despite this being a short period of time pre and post-intervention, there is evidence of distance travelled for most children. More data is needed to be gathered, over a longer period, before correlations between parent/guardian’s behaviours and their child’s SLC can be looked into.
Feedback
Participating parents were asked to “Describe your child’s communication skills” (pre-intervention and post-intervention). The following has been gathered from post-intervention responses:
“The difference in O is visible, he plays with his brother now. They attached plastic toy chains to their tops today and pretend to be trains. He makes car noises when pushing his cars and roars within playing with the dinosaurs more now and he uses actions to get what he wants or show me things as well as using his words.”
“L still doesn’t speak but he will now look more and bring things to me.”
“He still does a lot of pointing to say what he wants but that he will now ask for tea (drink) and says more words.”
“He’s a normal 2 year old now. He has come on really well and his speaking is really clear and he has started to slow down when he’s talking.”
“M’s eye contact has improved, and he seems to listen more sometimes, but it ranges. Since following his lead, I feel that it has helped although no progress has been made with speech.”
“He uses gestures and actions to show me what he wants. He is more confident now in getting this across.”
“F is much better; he has more words and can now express himself more.”
“She’s not fully talking, but she uses words and gestures now.”
“J now communicates more using words. He has more understanding and can now be seen playing and interacting with others at nursery. He used to block me out and prefer to play alone but will now play with me.”