Early Talk is our  highly successful training and accreditation programme aimed at the early years workforce in partnership with parents. It supports the communication skills of children from birth to age 5. The Early Talk programme has been independently evaluated as enhancing the learning environment for all children, with a long-term positive impact on staff and practice.

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.

Every element of Early Talk 0-5 years will contribute to your Level 3 Children and Young People’s Workforce Diploma, or the Continued Professional Development Award in Speech, Language and Communication.

Who for?

The course is aimed at:

• early years/pre-school 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 and speech
• 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.

Who for?

The course is aimed at early years/pre-school 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?

Supporting Communication and Language is a one-day training course. 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.

Training will be delivered in your workplace. However, 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.

Additionally, we have a regional team of Licensed Tutors who also deliver Early Talk 0-5 training.

We have a regional team of Licensed Tutors who deliver training (often to smaller groups) and the training materials and resource toolkits are purchased from Speech and Language UK. They cost £20 per participant book and £85 per toolkit + 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 0-5 or contact one of our Licensed Tutors directly.

To access our practitioner and tutor resources, please register or sign in to our learning centre here.