Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether Public Health England has plans to issue guidance to (a) parents and (b) carers on (i) identifying need for and (ii) access to speech, language and communication services for children .

Public Health England (PHE) is working in partnership with the Department for Education to produce evidence-based resources and tools to support health visitors, early years practitioners and parents/carers in identifying and supporting children’s early speech, language and communication (SLC) needs through training guidance and an enhanced early language assessment tool. The assessment tool will incorporate parent resources to support family understanding of SLC in their children and will be rolled out from April 2020.

Alongside this work, PHE is developing a model SLC pathway for children under five. This will ensure that professionals working with families are able to help them support their child’s SLC and how to access support if needed. The pathway will be published by September 2019.