Early Communication, information and support

Ideas to develop your baby or child’s communication skills. Find strategies, activities and resources that will help your child develop understanding, talking or communication skills. The resources and activities might be things you choose to do yourself at home. They might also include more particular activities advised by a practitioner or activities and programmes that your child’s school or setting might use. You may find more specific activities that can be advised or delivered by a speech and language therapist.

What follows is organised according to the Balanced System Five Strands and Three Levels because that is the framework that is underpinning service delivery across the system in Torbay and here are our Torbay resources.

What is The Balanced System®?

The Balanced System® framework is a way of making sure that in a setting, school or local area, the right provisions are available for parents, carers and professionals to help children and young people develop their speech, language and communication.

The framework is organised in five strands or themes and across three levels. All of these are important to get the whole system working at its best.  If a local area is working well then as a parent or carer you should be able to find out what you need to know to answer your questions and where to go for more information.

I know what to do to help my baby or child’s communication development.

I know what particular activities help my baby or child’s early communication development

I know what specialist activities help my baby or child’s early communication

On these pages you will find information, advice and support to help your child’s communication which is listed under universal, targeted or specialist and ideas to do at home, your child’s progress, services, activities you can do and general information and websites you can go to. Click on one of the universal, targeted or specialist signposts or one of the green buttons below to find out more.

What follows is organised according to the Balanced System Five Strands and Three Levels because that is the framework that is underpinning service delivery across the system in Torbay and here are our Torbay resources.

What is The Balanced System®?

The Balanced System® framework is a way of making sure that in a setting, school or local area, the right provisions are available for parents, carers and professionals to help children and young people develop their speech, language and communication.

The framework is organised in five strands or themes and across three levels. All of these are important to get the whole system working at its best.  If a local area is working well then as a parent or carer you should be able to find out what you need to know to answer your questions and where to go for more information.

All of the information, resources and activities are organised into three levels. Universal level is for all children and families and has general information and resources about speech, language and communication.

Targeted level information and resources are more directly useful for children and young people and their families where there is a likely worry about speech, language and communication or a need has been identified already. For the majority of children and young people and their families, this level will provide enough support.

Specialist level information and resources are either to support more complicated speech, language and communication needs or to provide more specialist information and help. Some children and young people and their families will need specialist level support as well as targeted and universal levels for them to make the progress they wish to make with speech, language and communication. Specialist level may not be needed all of the time and may be helpful at certain points on a child or young person’s journey.

Find out more here

In this section you can find information, links to websites and more on ‘how to help my child if I speak another language.’

Speech and Language UK has some helpful information on children learning more than one language here and a blog, Myth-busting: Bilingualism / English as an additional language with a link to a bilingualism factsheet

BBC Tiny Happy people – Bilingualism

have many dual language picture books which can be borrowed for those special story times in your home language. Click here for Torbay libraries website

Bilingual babies and speaking multiple languages at home.
Will hearing me speak more than one language confuse my child? Is the speech of bilingual children delayed? Tiny Happy People got the answers and information on the benefits of bilingualism.