Supporting Early Language Development Across Portsmouth
Early language development is a key foundation for children’s learning, wellbeing, and future success. In Portsmouth, the Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service is leading an innovative research and public health partnership to strengthen early communication skills across the city. By combining academic research, local data, and community insight, the team aims to create a sustainable, evidence-based model that supports families, reduces inequalities, and helps every child start school ready to learn.
Led by Clare Smith, Consultant Practitioner and Clinical Lead for Children’s Speech and Language Therapy, the project brings together partners from health, education, and the community to enhance early language support across Portsmouth. Informed by national research and local pilot programmes, the team is using a Realist Evaluation approach to explore what works best for children and families.
The Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service is working in partnership with Public Health, Portsmouth City Council, and the Portsmouth Health Determinants Research Collaboration to develop and evaluate a city-wide public health support service for children’s early language development.
This initiative has been informed by involvement in a national pilot programme, Early Language Support for Every Child, as well as findings from a previous NIHR-funded Clinical Academic Doctoral Research Fellowship.
Our programme of research uses a Realist Evaluation approach to understand what works for children, their families, and colleagues across early years education, public health, and the wider community when supporting early language development and school readiness.
Alongside a screening and intervention programme being piloted with around 1,200 children in 26 early years settings, we are building a community-based public health campaign for all families to help them support early language development at home.
We are using pre- and post-screening data to evaluate the effectiveness of our intervention, alongside qualitative interviews with families. Our aim is to understand the ‘essential ingredients’ of the support we offer—and to identify what works, for whom, and in what circumstances.
Our research with families focuses on developing a community asset-based framework to inform how we support families. Through the Research Academy’s internship programme, we have supported two interns—a community peer researcher and an aspiring speech and language therapist clinical academic - who have helped deliver interviews, plan the study, and benefit from training and mentoring opportunities.
With support from the Academy’s Clinical Academic Lead and through a network of collaborators across the UK, we are now developing a proposal for a future NIHR programme grant. This will use linked health and education data, alongside learning from our community peers and realist evaluation, to create a data-led, responsive approach to identifying need and supporting early language across Portsmouth City.