Intervention programmes that work with parents to support their children’s language development can help to narrow the gap between children growing up at a disadvantage and their peers. However, there is a lack of well-evidenced programmes being delivered at scale in the UK that target younger age groups, especially interventions focused on communication and language. In this project, we will identify high-potential programmes and develop essential partnerships to test and adapt interventions with the aim of making them effective, engaging and scalable.

We want to identify interventions that have a high potential to help parents to improve their children’s language and communication development before the age of two. We would like to work with local authorities to identify parenting interventions that are most effective for families in need of support in the UK. This programme is one of the ways of meeting our fairer start mission goal of closing the early years disadvantage gap.

By the time children are assessed after their first year of school, only 69% of children on free school meals are reaching the expected level of development in terms of their language and communication compared to 82% of their peers. This is especially concerning given the association between language development and a wide range of later social, emotional and behavioural outcomes. 

Intervention programmes that support parents to develop their children’s language skills have been shown to be effective at improving children’s outcomes, but there is a lack of well-evidenced programmes developed for delivery in the UK. This is particularly true for programmes targeted at younger children aged 0–2. Working with this age group ensures that intervention happens early before problems emerge and sets parents on track to embed behaviours that support their children’s early development. 

By focusing on building parents’ capabilities, this project supports our overall mission goal to narrow the school readiness gap between babies, young children and their peers born into deprivation. 

Following a structured evidence review and stakeholder consultation, we have identified a shortlist of parenting interventions. These show robust evidence that they will make an impact on child language outcomes before the age of 2 but they have not yet been implemented or tested at scale in the UK. Our shortlisting criteria focused on the strength of the evidence linking the programme to an improved outcome, the magnitude of the effect that was reported and an estimate of the cost of delivering the intervention.

In the next stage of this project we will further assess this shortlist by: 

• drawing on internal and external expertise about the strengths and weaknesses of existing programmes and their potential to engage parents
• consulting with prospective delivery providers to gain a sharper understanding of the potential to deliver each model 
• starting discussions with local authorities to explore their openness to partnership and adaptation.

The ultimate aim is to form a partnership with one local authority, plan further joint work to adapt the programme to a UK context and trial adapted versions of the programme with UK-based service providers.