BSA's Vice Chair Leys Geddes has produced a YouTube video on the Bercow review, about speech and language provision for children. See the video.

View Leys' video below.

The Bercow Review of services for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs has just published its Interim Review; the Final Report is due in July 2008. See www.dfes.gov.uk/bercowreview

The BSA was delighted to see that the Interim Report states that "communication is at the core of all social interaction. Communication is a key life skill. Communication is a fundamental human right". Unfortunately, few people understand that to have a difficulty in talking is just as life changing as having a difficulty in walking - and possibly even more so, because talking is not just something we do, talking is about who we are.

Around 720,000 children and adults in the UK stammer but, not surprisingly, it's not a high profile condition. However, whilst we know that adults can't be 'cured', we also know that if you can take a child to a qualified speech therapist, as soon as the stammer is obvious, which is normally somewhere around the age of three, then almost 90% of those children who are at risk of persistent stammering will recover.

The good news is that the Prime Minister, the Secretaries of State for Children, Schools and Families, and Health, and John Bercow MP himself, have all said that Early Intervention policies are the way forward.

This is a truly wonderful opportunity to save thousands of children from a lifetime of stammering and, over the course of the next three of four generations, reduce stammering by 90%. But the danger is that stammering, much like people who stammer, will be brushed back under the carpet in favour of something more dramatic and more visible.

Leys Geddes, April 2008

YouTube video

To see the video below, you may need to click the yellow bar at the top of your browser and 'Allow Blocked Content'. The video is also available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNA9rXrVrPU