In February 2000 Liverpool City Council in partnership with Liverpool PCT (now Liverpool Community Health) and ICAN set up a resource for pre-school pupils with severe and specific speech and language difficulties. The resource was an immediate success and since 2000 has supported a huge number of children and their families. This has been either at the base at Mab Lane School or in an outreach capacity to Early Years settings across the city.
In order to facilitate receptive and expressive language development, the team have used Signalong to support their work. Many parents/carers and Early Years Practitioners have attended training sessions to find out more about the value of signing and to learn a repertoire of signs to use in their setting.
The popularity of the training has lead to the production of this manual. In the manual there are over 200 signs that proved invaluable in the early year's environment. These are all functional signs which, when used along with the spoken word, promote the understanding of language and support children as they develop intelligible speech.
Signing is fun and children who do not have any speech and language difficulties enjoy learning these skills too. For those pupils who need some extra support to develop their language, signing can help build confidence, lessen frustration and encourage the development of new vocabulary.
This is an excellent resource and I am sure it will become a key reference document for all those working to help children with SLCN