About WellComm

WellComm is a speech and language toolkit available to early years practitioners working with children from 6 months to 6 years (Early years), and 6 years to 11 years (Primary).

The toolkit can be used in any early years and primary setting. This includes pre-school playgroups, day nurseries, private nurseries, children’s centres, special schools and schools. Any early years professional or primary school practitioner can use WellComm, including child minders, nursery workers, health visitors and teachers.  It can also be used with individuals in their own homes.

The early identification of any speech and language difficulty or delay is key to the progressive development of a young child’s overall development. It is therefore essential to ensure that all early years practitioners have a good awareness of what represents appropriate development at each stage, and have access to programmes that assist them to support children’s language. The aim of WellComm Primary is to help primary school practitioners identify students who may have speech, language and social communication needs and minimise any identified difficulties through implementing appropriate interventions. To help with these objectives, the WellComm Toolkit can be used to:

• Track the progress of all students, regardless of ability.
• Identify areas of concern in speech, language and social communication in order to ensure targeted school intervention.
• Provide a variety of resources in The Big Book of Ideas enabling teaching staff/practitioners to deliver appropriate and focused activities to:
  • target those students who have some language difficulties
  • enhance the skills of those who are developing within the normal range.
• Provide advice and guidance for group-based teaching and learning.
• Provide information and ideas for supporting a student’s communication needs within the classroom.
• Provide a means of monitoring the success of strategies used to enhance communication skills.
• Support teaching staff/practitioners to feel confident to signpost those students who are identified as having communication difficulties to relevant services.
• Develop a collaborative approach between school and home settings.

Both the Early Years and the Primary toolkits enable you to quickly and easily identify children needing support. They’re quick and simple to use (requiring no speech and language expertise), and the traffic light scoring format of the instant reports makes them quick to interpret. Both toolkits come with an age-appropriate Big Book of Ideas providing a total of over 150 instant, play-based activities so you can take appropriate action straight away. Activities can be used with parents at home too, so that support is provided whether or not a child is referred to a speech and language therapist.