#252 Being a Communication Champion – Catton Grove Primary

The impact of this project has been that the staff team are more confident at identifying and supporting all children with their language and communication. There have been audits of the environment to ensure that they are more communication friendly and the use of Wellcomm as a screening and intervention tool has been successfully embedded across both Nursery and Reception year groups.

The support for parents and carers was greatly improved through the community communication champion sessions that we were able to signpost families to; as a result we have had more engagement with the parents about their child’s developing communication and language skills.

The training was organised by NOA and was cascaded to the Foundation Stage team through a series of staff meetings.

The team were given access to the online training that was created for the project by ICAN and they completed this during the first lockdown. We were also able to offer this training remotely to the wider school community as well.

Vocabulary was an area identified that required particular development. The Nursery team trialled using the Word Aware approach complemented with Signalong to support the development of vocabulary. This is now very well embedded in Nursery and has had a positive impact. As a setting we are aiming to continue this through into Reception and KS1 and will be accessing the hub school training to support us to do so.

Wellcomm intervention has been embedded across the setting and is now used also in Reception, this is having a positive impact.

If we were to start the project again we would look at ways of maintaining the legacy of the champions in the setting from the start. We started with three and then one left for another job and another went on maternity leave. As a large setting this meant that it fell on the shoulders of one person to organise the training, complete any audits and liaise with the community communication champion project. We would suggest looking at a plan moving forward that can support the continuation of the project as staff changes happen over time.

The project did not incur any additional costs to us as a setting. The Wellcomm kit was provided for free by NOA and the resources we have used over time have been ones that we already had in the setting.