Communication Needs of Vulnerable Children and Young People: Are we doing enough?

Children and young people with communication difficulties are, by definition, vulnerable. Communication difficulties may be their primary presenting condition, and this affects their functioning and their future in all aspects of their lives. However communication difficulties are also found with very high frequency in other populations of children and young people identified as vulnerable, such as those with social and emotional difficulties, behavioural difficulties (or all three), those coming from poverty and social disadvantage, and those already in contact with the justice system. This makes “communication needs in vulnerable children and young people” a very large issue for society to deal with.

This talk will review what we know now. It will present the current evidence on the language and communication needs of vulnerable children and young people and our understanding of their needs and developmental trajectories. It will discuss theoretical issues of how associated language and communication is with later social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Last but not least, it will tackle the implications of how much we understand about the needs of these individuals in relation to the provision currently offered.

Dr Judy Clegg is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human Communication Sciences at the University of Sheffield, UK. She trained as a Speech and language therapist at the University of Manchester and completed a PhD in developmental language disorders at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests focus on the developmental trajectories and outcomes of children with language and communication needs, the impact of social disadvantage on children’s language and communication development, the complex co-morbidity between children’s social disadvantage, their developing language and communication and their behaviour and mental health, and evaluating the effectiveness of  interventions designed to facilitate children and young peoples' language and communication abilities. Judy is also co-editor of the journal, Child Language Teaching and Therapy. Further information can be found at https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hcs/staff/clegg