12. Short Debate: The importance of early language development: current action on this key issue and what more needs to be done to drive forward change in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:41 pm on 14 March 2018.

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Photo of Llyr Gruffydd Llyr Gruffydd Plaid Cymru 5:41, 14 March 2018

As I mentioned earlier, there's strong evidence to underline the relationship between poverty and early language delay, with children from the most disadvantaged groups more likely to have weaker language skills than those in more advantaged groups. And that means that language skills are a critical factor in the intergenerational cycles that can actually perpetuate poverty, as poor communication skills are passed down from parent to child. Indeed, the statistics are quite frightening and, in fact, speak for themselves.

Over half of the children in socially deprived areas may start school with impoverished speech, language and communication skills, and by the time that they're three years old, children from the poorest 20 per cent of the population are nearly a year and a half behind a child in the highest income group in terms of language development. Now, let's just think about that: already, by age three, children from the poorest 20 per cent of the population are a year and a half behind. Now, 80 per cent of teachers have reported that they often see children join their schools struggling to speak in full sentences, and I have no doubt that all of us here in this Assembly are united in our ambition to bring children out of poverty and to give them greater life chances, but so far neither the Government nor this Assembly have found a way of properly achieving that ambition. Yet we do know, of course, that vocabulary at age five has been found to be the best predictor of whether children who experience social deprivation in childhood were actually able to buck the trend and escape poverty in later adult life.

Compared to children who had normally developing language at five, five-year-olds who have normal non-verbal skills but a poor vocabulary are one and a half times more likely to be poor readers or have mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be unemployed by the time they reach 34 years of age. So, children's poor speech, language and communication skills therefore have a profound impact on a wide range of outcomes, including behaviour, mental health, school readiness and employability.

Six out of 10 of the young people in the youth justice estate have communication difficulties, and 88 per cent of long-term unemployed young men have speech, language and communication needs. We also know that, without effective help, a third of children with speech, language and communication difficulties will need treatment for mental health problems in adult life. Now, that's astonishing. All of those statistics tell us the same story. By improving children's verbal skills at five years old, we could be greatly enhancing their life experiences and life chances and further down the line, of course, freeing up our limited resources to tackle other issues in our society.

Speech, language and communication needs are particularly prevalent in our most vulnerable children and young people, of course. Many looked-after children have unidentified or unmet communication needs. Indeed, recent analysis found that 81 per cent of children with behavioural problems had undetected speech, language and communication needs, with very little specialist provision in place to identify and support these needs.

Given the importance of this issue, it's positive to see an increasing focus on children's speech, language and communication skills within early years policy in Wales. To date, we've seen a speech and language therapist being employed at every Flying Start team in Wales, which is an important step in the right direction. Part of the therapist's role is to both upskill the early years workforce in these areas and, of course, to improve parents' knowledge and skills to support children's early language development.

This relatively small investment in terms of the numbers of speech and language therapists employed is having a big impact on the outcomes of young children in Flying Start areas. In 2015, the Bridgend Flying Start speech and language therapists won an NHS award for their work in reducing language delay in two and three-year-olds. They worked with Flying Start nurseries there to significantly reduce the number of children with delayed language skills. Out of 600 children screened on starting nursery, 73 per cent were assessed as having significant language delay, which, as we know, would impact on future learning development. After the interventions delivered by nursery staff, which were planned and supported by the Flying Start speech and language therapists, over two thirds of the children with the worst language delay had improved. That's over 400 children in Bridgend alone who have had their life chances significantly improved thanks to the intervention of the speech and language therapists.