Reading Children’s Commissioning Team Wins Awards

The Council team picked up the Commissioning Award for the second year in a row and the Pearson Outstanding Achievement Award at the 2013/2014 Shine a Light Awards. The awards recognised the work the team had done to cut the number of children being identified as at risk of speech and language delay by nearly 50% in the academic year spanning September 2012 to July 2013.

Judges were impressed by the joint working between Speech and Language Therapists (SLT), Health Services, including health visitors, Children’s Centres and Early Year’s childcare settings to improve the identification of communication delays in children

The team developed a Communication Pack for parents and professionals, distributing it to all 13 Children’s Centres and 35 Early Year’s settings across the borough. This helps people to implement strategies themselves without the need for specialist support, making services more sustainable for the authority in the current economic climate.

As a result of the support the team offers Children’s Centres and Early Year’s settings, several have received inspection results praising their focus on communication development, (including those from Ofsted.) The introduction of Young Commissioners helped the service broaden its reach via the internet to increase parental understanding of Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN), and via offering dedicated sessions to young parent groups.

The Awards, held in London on Thursday 3rd April and hosted by Broadcaster and Health Campaigner, Anne Diamond, are run by Pearson Assessment in partnership with The Communication Trust to honour individuals, teams, campaigns, communication friendly settings and communities that have excelled in their support of children and young people’s communication.

For the full list of Shine a Light winners and highly commended finalists, visit http://www.shinealightawards.co.uk