Every Child a Talker

Every Child a Talker (ECaT) was a national initiative and Cheshire East took part in the last wave of the programme (from April 2010 to March 2011).

Cheshire East’s ECaT programme was rated ‘Outstanding’ in March 2011 by the National Strategies Senior Regional Adviser.

ECaT aims were to:

• Improve children's early language development
• Improve the skills of the practitioners working with young children to support children’s language development
• Increase the understanding and involvement of parents in their children’s language development

19 early years settings including day nurseries, maintained nurseries, pre-schools and child minders took part in the programme in Cheshire East. Each of these settings and schools identified an Early Language Lead Practitioner (ELLP). They have all been supported through visits, training and cluster meetings by an Early Language Consultant (ELC).
The ELLPs in these settings have also received training and support from Specialist Speech and Language Therapists; this has supported the development of the provision within their settings and the knowledge and confidence of staff to identify and support children’s early language development.

The settings involved have been:

• Developing rich and exciting communication friendly environments with lots of fun and interesting activities to talk about
• Supporting adults to further understand the importance of speaking and listening
• Involving parents and carers by sharing Top Tips for developing language, taking part in the Bookstart rhyme challenge and holding parents’ information sessions
• Carefully considering their interaction techniques and developing new strategies to support children’s early language development

The ELLPs in these ECaT settings have been responsible for supporting staff to gather very specific evidence about the language development of all children over 2 years old in the setting – the evidence includes information about children’s listening and attention, understanding, talking and social communication.

The impact of this involvement was shared at a Celebration Day - on Thursday 24th March 2011 over 70 people gathered at Oakenclough Children’s Centre in Handforth to celebrate the success of the Every Child a Talker programme.

ELLPs brought along portfolios of work, photographs, resources and examples of communication friendly spaces. The ELC shared child monitoring data that was collected three times over the year; this data showed the very positive improvements in children’s early language development.

Invited guests included the heads and reception class staff of schools linked to the ECaT early years settings. As well as celebrating the success of the programme, a specific aim of the day was to ensure sustainability of the programme for the children; therefore, reception staff who attended received training and resources to enable them to carry this out.

Please use the links on these pages to find out more about how you can support the early language development of children in your setting; this may be through developing a communication friendly environment, carrying out audits of your provision or sharing talking tips with parents.