Early Talk is our highly successful training and accreditation programme aimed at the early years workforce in partnership with families. It supports the communication skills of children from birth to age 5.

Early Talk provides a suite of three training modules that enables you, through a range of strategies and techniques, to support all young children’s communication skills.

Who for?

The course is aimed at early years and nursery practitioners who want to increase their knowledge of the approaches and strategies that can be used in settings to support the development of speech, language and communication skills in children aged 0-5.

What will I learn?

Early Talk: Supporting Communication and Language is a one-day training course delivered live by a Speech and Language UK Licensed Tutor, delivered either face-to-face or remotely. The course focuses on increasing participants knowledge of typical communication and language development, developing practitioners’ strategies and interaction styles. Overall, the goal of the training is to maximise participants opportunities to develop every child’s skills in communication and language.

Who for?

The course is aimed at:

• early years/nursery staff who want to increase their knowledge of the approaches and strategies that can be used in settings to support the development of speech, language and communication skills in children aged 0-3
• language therapy assistants who have limited experience of working with children in early years/pre-school settings.

What will I learn?

Working with under 3s is a one-day course that both enhances knowledge and provides staff with strategies they can use to support communication skills right from the start of a child’s life. As part of the training, participants receive a range of resources – including one to help them carry out the EYFS progress check for 2–3-year-olds.

Who for?

Designed for family facing staff, including health visitors, early years staff and family support workers, with the aim of enhancing parental support of early communication development.

What will I learn?

Working with parents will help participants be aware of adult behaviours that affect children’s communication development, practitioner behaviours that affect parents’ support of their child’s communication development and practitioner techniques for supporting Healthy Child Programme reviews and EYFS progress checks.

Training can be delivered face-to-face in your workplace, or online. If you are a small setting you might wish to consider grouping your staff together with another setting for the training and sharing the costs between yourselves.

Training is organised directly with our team of licensed tutors – find a tutor close to you.

The training materials and resource toolkits are purchased from Speech and Language UK. The cost is £20 per participant book (for each individual) and £85 per toolkit (per setting), plus the cost of the Licensed Tutor delivering your training. Prices for training vary.

Get in touch via info@speechandlanguage.org.uk or 020 7843 2515 to talk to our team about Early Talk, or contact one of our Licensed Tutors directly.

If you are a Licensed Tutor, or practitioners who has booked on to training, you can access the practitioner and tutor slides by registering or signing into the Learning Centre here.

The Early Talk: Working with families and Early Talk: Working with under 3’s courses will be updated and moved to our new learning centre, expected to be available from September 2025.

The existing format of live training for these modules will still be available until this time, for more information please contact info@speechandlanguage.org.uk.

The Learning Centre offers a flexible approach to learning, as courses can be completed online and at your own pace. Try out the Learning Centre with our free Introduction to Speech, Language and Communication course, or enrol in our newly launched Primary Years bundle now.