Communication Development Profile

Charlotte Child

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351687461
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This practical resource provides a simple, shared framework to help speech & language therapists work more effectively with the families, carers and teachers of children with severe and profound learning disabilities. The profile immediately improves the way therapists support and advise teachers and families, and consequently results in a more united and holistic approach towards the child's development. It provides a clear descriptive breakdown of five key areas of language and communication development from birth to the development and use of grammatical sentences. Areas are: attention; comprehension (what the child understands); expression (how the child communicates); sound system; and, use of communication (what and why the child communicates). It creates an individual and visual representation of the child's development across each of these key areas, facilitating joint discussion and identification of the skills most needing support. It enables information from therapists' assessments and parents' or teachers' informal observations and experiences to be combined creating a more equal and share view of the child's skills in their everyday life. It links to the P-Levels, expanding on the descriptions of the skills expected at each stage and focusing on the core developmental changes expected at each level, therefore providing an invaluable joint resource for teachers and speech & language therapists to use together. It establishes the communicative phase that the child is working within, therefore enabling the most appropriate style of speech and language therapy intervention to be identified, based on the child's developmental learning style and needs. It results in a reduction in dissatisfaction and misunderstandings when identifying targets and setting activities with both teachers and families, and in agreeing speech & language therapy provision. This profile is an essential tool for all therapists working with children with learning disabilities. It improves multi-disciplinary assessments; enables parents to have an informed and genuine role; makes target setting in educational settings directly relevant to the curriculum; expands on the P-Levels and better describes them; and, enables the therapist to explain their thought processes, which all lead to better goal-setting and a cohesive communication development strategy for the child.

1
The Communication Development Profile

An overview

The key questions at the heart of many family and team discussions for a child with special needs are:

• Where is my/this child with respect to normal development?
• Where are things going wrong?
• What can I do to help?

How the Communication Development Profile works

The Communication Development Profile is designed to enable families, in particular, to be more directly involved in contributing to children’s communication assessments and in planning their targets. The Profile helps speech & language therapists to explain their framework and decision-making to parents and teachers. It does so by breaking down the stages of communication development into small steps across the range of communication skills. Through evidence following assessment and/or from joint discussions with parents and teachers using the descriptions, the developmental stage for each communication skill is agreed. This information is then plotted onto a grid (see Profile 1) and provides the child’s individual Communication Development Profile. An example of how the Communication Development Profile can be used, based on a real case history, is included on pages 113–123.

Profile 1 Assessment areas covered by the Communication Development Profile

Detailed descriptions of each stage of communication development

The Profile provides detailed descriptions of each stage of communication development, termed ‘communication stages’ starting from birth to the point at which a child understands and uses grammatical sentences.

• Involuntary stage
• Voluntary stage
• ‘If I do … I get …’ stage
• ‘If I do … You do …’ stage
• Situational stage
• First words
• Simple phrases
• Describing phrases
• Grammar and complex sentences

It identifies the underlying communicative competencies expected for each stage, and by matching them to the corresponding P-Level, enables speech & language therapists and teachers to use the same framework of communication development.

P-Levels are the performance descriptions set out in the DfEE/Qualification Curriculum Authority (QCA) Curriculum Guidelines (2005), which outline the eight levels of early learning and attainment leading up to Level 1 of the National Curriculum.

P-Levels can also be used in conjunction with the Foundation Curriculum (DfEE/QCA, 2003). However, it is important to realise that both the Foundation Curriculum and P-Levels have been written for different purposes and constructed in different ways. For children with significant special needs, P-Levels provide a more detailed and specific framework for assessment and planning.

For those establishments who do not use P-Levels the descriptive framework stands alone, and can still be used just as effectively to support joint discussions by referring to the speech & language terms only.

Assessment of the child across five key areas of communication

There are five main areas of communication, termed ‘assessment areas’, that speech & language therapists assess:

• 1 Attention Control (the child’s ability to control and focus his own attention)
• 2 Comprehension (what the child understands)
• 3 Expression (how the child communicates)
• 4 Sound System (the development of the child’s ability to produce and use sounds in words)
• 5 Use of Communication (what and why the child communicates)

This provides a wide range of information about the child’s communication system, and enables the speech & language therapist to look at how each area is developing and how they interrelate and affect each other. Additional observations and assessments, such as the child’s play skills and cognitive skills, help to further inform about how his communication development relates to his overall stage of development, which is also a very important consideration.

The communication phases

Communication development can be considered to move through three phases:

• Early Communicators
• Developing Communicators
• Established Communicators

These phases are derived from the development of a child’s use of communication skills, as described by Gerard (1987) and by Anderson-Wood and Rae Smith (1997).

By establishing the communicative phase that a child is in, it is possible to identify the most developmentally appropriate style of intervention that will best support the child’s communication skills at that point.

This has particular value in enabling the speech & language therapist to show, with evidence, when a child’s needs will be best met either through the indirect management of their environment and everyday interactions, or through the direct approach of teaching language skills through specific activities. Doing this has considerable implications for the successful inclusion into educational placements such as nursery or school, of children whose communication skills fall within the Early or Developing Communicators phase. It is not enough just to provide a ‘talking’ environment; children need to be able to communicate meaningfully and equally, and to interact with the children and adults around them. This phase also emphasises that it is not just enhancing or changing the children’s communication skills that makes the difference. In order for the child to make the most of the communication skills that they have, it is equally important that adults adapt their style of interaction and communication too, so that it best matches the child’s developmental stage of communication.

How to Complete the Profile

Nine questionnaires are used to build up a child’s profile. Most of the questionnaires are divided into sections, each section relating to one box on the Profile. Each item on the questionnaire has two empty boxes next to it to identify two skill levels:

• working within
• consistent level

The following shading has been used on the profile grid:

	Consistent level
	The child uses the described skills on a daily basis, across different environments and situations, with minimal help or prompting.
	Working within
	The child shows some development and independent use of the described skills but it is not consistent or established.
	Area not relevant to the assessment
	The sound system is blacked out in the Early Communicators phase because although there is a development it is not an area that is relevant in planning at that stage.

The term ‘working within’ has been chosen very deliberately as this includes children who are maximising their skills rather than showing ongoing changes.

When the child has reached a consistent level on any of the items listed, simply tick the ‘consistent level’ box. If the child is still working towards that skill or if the child uses it inconsistently, then tick the ‘working within’ box. Only when all the boxes in that section have been ticked should that section be recorded as at a ‘consistent level’ on the Profile.

Please note that only one level should be marked as ‘working within’ for each area of communication.

Although some children may show splinter skills across the profile it is important to first identify the child’s best,...