Updating the Best start in speech, language and communication (SLC) gov.uk guidance

In October 2020, Public Health England published the “Best start in speech, language and communication (SLC): Guidance to support local commissioners and service leads”, alongside supporting evidence and case studies of good practice. The aim of these documents is to support commissioners and service leads to design and implement effective systems of support and provision. Since then, there have been a number of developments relevant to the guidance and the underpinning evidence. The Department of Health and Social Care will update the guidance on early years speech, language, and communication. To enable this, our project will update the supporting evidence underpinning the guidance.

We will undertake a review of primary studies conducted in the UK since 2016 and conduct stakeholder work with key practitioners, managers and strategic leads. From studies included in the review, we will provide an overview of interventions or approaches at the universal, targeted, and system level that have been described/evaluated, their reported impact, barriers and facilitators to implementation, and any components reported to facilitate behaviour change in parents and/or practitioners. In focus groups and interviews with services leads, we will obtain perspectives on principles of effective commissioning, including barriers and facilitators to effective implementation. We will include exemplars of system improvements in local areas from this qualitative data. We will also run two lay involvement workshops with parents to seek their views and perspectives.