Speech-language therapy for child social communication disorder
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A new speech and language therapy intervention for children who have Social Communication Disorder: feasibility and acceptability to service users and practitioners
IRAS ID
188072
Contact name
Catherine Adams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 30 days
Research summary
Children who have social communication disorder (SCD) find it hard to understand and use language, especially in social situations. They may show some mild features of autism. This can affect how well they learn at school, their friendships and emotional/mental health as they grow up. This has a substantial impact on families and is expensive for the NHS and social services. An effective communication intervention may be able to prevent some of these problems but there is currently no research to support this.\nIn our previous work, we developed and gave a new speech and language therapy intervention called the Social Communication Intervention Programme (SCIP) to children who have SCD in their schools. Parents and teachers felt that the intervention led to improvements in social communication. A bigger study with more children and NHS speech and language therapists (SLTs) is now needed to show if SCIP intervention really does work.\nIn this research, we will carry out a series of three linked enquiries:\n1)\ta survey to speech/language departments in the UK to find out the number of children with SCD currently receiving services and to ascertain how services would view participation in a future trial\n2)\t Training SLTs to give SCIP intervention to 24 children (aged between 6 and 11 years) who have SCD, using a novel way of measuring each child’s progress against a set of individualised aims. This will help us to develop effective measures of progress for a bigger study\n3)\tSpeaking to the children, parents and SLTs to ask them about their experience of SCIP intervention. \nWe will share our findings with people who work in, design and pay for SLT services and families affected by SCD through reports, presentations and research articles.\n
REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/NW/0500
Date of REC Opinion
4 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion