Listening to Children and Young People with Speech, Language and Communication Needs

Details: Paperback

ISBN13: 978-1-907826-08-5

Release Date: December 2011

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Professor Sue Roulstone leads a team of researchers at the Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit, North Bristol NHS Trust, and the University of West of England, UK. She is an elected fellow of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and was Chair of the RCSLT (2004-6). Professor Roulstone contributes regularly to national clinical and policy debates and has contributed to a number of national consultations with parents and children including the Bercow Report.

Professor Sharynne McLeod of Charles Sturt University, Australia, is an elected fellow of Speech Pathology Australia and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She is the editor of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and vice president of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association. She provided advice on the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - Children and Youth and her research foregrounds strategies for enabling children to communicate and participate.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• About the Editors
• About the Cover
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Foreword by John Bercow
• Preface

PART I: ADVOCATES' VIEWS

1. A Duty to Listen - David John Ramsbotham
2. Listen Up! - Abigail Beverly
3. The Bridge between the World of the Disabled and the World of the Fully Functioning - Andrea Kaye
4. Working in Partnership: Therapists, Children and Families - Hazel Roddam
5. Tuning into Children with Speech and Language Impairment - Linda Lascelles
6. Social Work and Communication with Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Tillie Curran

PART II: ISSUES

1. Listening to Children and Young People with Speech, Language and Communication Needs: Who, Why and How? - Sharynne McLeod
2. Children's Voice and Perspectives: The Struggle for Recognition, Meaning and Effectiveness - Barry Percy-Smith
3. The Importance of Silence When Hearing the Views of Children and Young People with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Ann Lewis
4. Ethics, Consent and Assent When Listening to Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Rosalind Merrick
5. Issues and Assumptions of Participatory Research with Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Clodagh Miskelly and Sue Roulstone
6. Independent Advocacy and Listening to Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Jane Dalrymple
7. Listening to Proxies for Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Juliet Goldbart and Julie Marshall
8. Listening to Adolescents with Speech, Language and Communication Needs Who Are in Contact with the Youth Justice System - Pamela C. Snow, Dixie D. Sanger and Karen Bryan
9. Exploring Identity of Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs by Listening to Children's Narratives - Rena Lyons
10. Listening to Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs through Arts-Based Methods - Jane Coad and Helen Hambly
11. Cognitive and Linguistic Factors in the Interview Process - Julie E. Dockrell and Geoff Lindsay

PART III: EXAMPLES

1. Listening to Individuals with Language Impairment: What One Can Learn in 30 Years - Bonnie Brinton and Martin Fujiki
2. The Stammering Information Programme: Listening to Young People Who Stammer - Elaine Kelman, Ali Berquez and Frances Cook
3. 'Give me time and I'll tell you': Using Ethnography to Investigate Aspects of Identity with Teenagers Who Use Alternative and Augmentative Methods of Communication (AAC) - Mary Wickenden
4. Listening to 4- to 5-Year-Old Children with Speech Impairment Using Drawings, Interviews and Questionnaires - Sharynne McLeod, Jane McCormack, Lindy McAllister, Linda J. Harrison and Erin L. Holliday
5. Listening to Children with Cleft Lip and Palate in Germany - Sandra Neumann
6. 'I can't say words much': Listening to School-Aged Children's Experiences of Speech Impairment - Graham Daniel and Sharynne McLeod
7. Listening to Adolescents after Traumatic Brain Injury - Lucie Shanahan, Lindy McAllister and Michael Curtin
8. Listening to the Post-16 Transition Experiences of Young People with Specific Language Impairment - Catherine Carroll and Julie E. Dockrell
9. Listening to Children and Young People Talk about Their Desired Outcomes - Helen Hambly, Jane Coad, Geoff Lindsay and Sue Roulstone
10. 'Everything is easier 'cos they get it.': Listening to Young People's Views about People Who Work with Them - Wendy Lee
11. Designing a Measure to Explore the Quality of Life for Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Chris Markham
12. Listening to Infants about What Life is Like in Childcare: A Mosaic Approach - Frances Press, Ben S. Bradley, Joy Goodfellow, Linda J. Harrison, Sharynne McLeod, Jennifer Sumsion, Sheena Elwick and Tina Stratigos
13. Listening to the Views of Children in Longitudinal Population-Based Studies - Linda J. Harrison and Jane McCormack
14. Finding Ways to Listen to Young People in Youth Groups: The Afasic Youth Project - Abigail Beverly and Clare Davies-Jones
15. Making a Film as a Means of Listening to Young People - Sue Roulstone, Clodagh Miskelly and Robbie Simons
16. Listening to Siblings of Children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs- Jacqueline Barr
17. Listening to Improve Services for Children and Young People with Speech, Language and Communication Needs - Sue Roulstone and Sharynne McLeod

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS BOOK:

...I am a self-confessed train/bedtime reader, so I found this book fantastic for its dip-in-able, engaging and readable style. The first few pages are a series of short passages, offering unique views of speech and language difficulties and its therapy. These are heart-warming, sensitively written and very powerful examples of the impact of our work, and the authors tell you this themselves as their voices radiate through the pages.

The rest of the book is made up of a series of chapters depicting how others are listening to young people with a range of difficulties. At just under 300 pages, it is packed with different ideas and techniques that I have been truly inspired by.

This book encourages the reader to analyse and reflect on their own clinical practice and keeps a focus on their evidence base by supplying references at the end of each chapter. I would normally recommend taking a thriller to bed but I will put my neck on the line and say that your clinical practice will be enhanced after 'sleeping on this book'.

RCSLT Bulletin Reviewer Kirsty Bui, SLT, Director, SLT Journal Club Overall rating: 4 out of 5

...This is an impressive attempt from 50 contributors, including Linda Lascelles and Clare Davies-Jones of Afasic, from a range of backgrounds to examine the theoretical and practical implications of hearing children's voices and viewpoints to enable services to become more responsive to children's needs.

The book is in three parts:
Part I: The importance of listening
Part II: Theoretical perspective and issues
Part III: Real life examples of listening to children and young people

Part I gives great insight into the rights of the child as an active participant in their education, shaped by a changing landscape of opinion by landmark documents like the United Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child and in Part II the abstracts at the beginning of each theoretical chapter were helpful. Part III reports back on children's views in the fields of stammering, cerebral palsy, speech and language impairment, post traumatic brain injury and cleft palate.

It was illuminating to hear about the range of techniques used to elecit views including artwork, mind maps, writing on post its, diaries, and making films, as well as use of the more familiar questionnaires, individual and group interviews and observations. There was even a technique using silence with children to elicity viewpoints!

All the chapters are presented in essay format and are short and readable. In the main, these are written by professionals but there is frequent referene to what children have said and communicated. There is also a chapter written by a young person with a speech and language difficulty, Abigail Beverly, who also designed the book cover.

Those of us working in the field of speech, language and communication need to be informed about hearing the voice of the child, to develop our own 'listening ears' and to allow children more power as partcipants in their education.

Speech, Language and Communication Difficulties Team, Cardiff LEA