Talking Tigers

On Saturday the 6th of November 2021, with the support of Tower Hamlets council, CommuniGate held its first full-day event! Talking Tigers was a resounding success and we couldn't be happier with the results. We were joined by almost 200 attendees, including educational professionals and parents, who came to learn more about supporting young children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).

It was great to see Deputy Mayor of Tower Hamlets Motin Uz-Zaman there to support such an important cause!

The goal of our event was to address the issue of profound ethnic disproportionality of SLCN identified as a result of the 2008 'Bercow Report'. This report reviewed services for children/young people with SLCN, and found that the current system was broken. The follow-up report, 'Bercow: Ten Years On', found that speech and language therapy services were still inaccessible and inequitable. Children are being missed and many families are not receiving adequate support. Research commissioned in response to the original report found that some ethnic groups, including the Bangladeshi community, are disproportionately impacted by SLCN. Steve Strand and Geoff Lindsay’s work suggests that there may be cultural or linguistic barriers which impede access to speech and language therapy services. Furthermore, they identified a need for collaboration and communication with ethnic communities, as well as a need to raise awareness about conditions such as autism spectrum disorder. CommuniGate is dedicated to engaging these hard-to-reach families and making support more accessible.

We aimed to tackle these problems through an event geared towards the local Bangladeshi community of Tower Hamlets (where we are based), as the Bangladeshi population is the single largest ethnic group in the borough. We had Bengali-speaking therapists and translators available, as well as therapists with Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi language skills. We chose the London Muslim Centre as our venue because of how well-known it is in the community, and it helped us to attract families that might have never heard of SLCN.

We know from the Bercow Report that early identification and intervention is crucial when it comes to treating and managing speech, language and communication needs. That is why our talks and assessments targeted primarily the 0-5 age group. Our incredible therapists carried out a total of 45 speech and language therapy assessments; many of these children had never been seen by a speech and language therapist or were even rejected by the NHS. To ensure that families are benefitting long-term, we are also reaching out to all those who came for assessments with free summary reports, and resources to use at home with their children.

The overwhelming interest and attendance at our event shows how significant the need is within this community, and in general, due to budget strains on the NHS as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. Our team listened to many moving stories from parents desperate to help their children and access speech and language therapy services. After seeing such high engagement levels, we are hopeful that as our organisation grows we will continue to make a significant difference in awareness levels about SLCN and equip people with the tools they need to help their children reach their full potential.